So about 1 month ago i bought 5 fancy goldfish from petsmart. All of their goldfish tanks had a couple of those vacation feeding blocks (the kind that are concentrated fish food stones that u just drop in the tank and it should feed the fish for a few days - a week). A girl that worked there told me they used that to make sure all the gold fish got enough food. The goldfish were all constantly eatting at it but i didnt think much of it then.
So i bought 5 goldfish and i took them home and for about a week i couldnt get them to eat anything! i use goldfish fish flakes and ended up buying 3 different brands of them and trying some tropical fish flakes and they kept spitting out the food and wouldnt eat any of it. then they staretd getting sick and the water started gettign dirty and I finally got them to eat by feeding them left over blood worms from when i had my african dwarf frog. and i slowly got them to eat the flakes by mixing in a little at a time when i fed the blood works. now its been about a month and they are eatting the flakes fine. they prefer the colored flakes so i bought a big bottle of that but currently have enough food to last a few years....

My point of this whole rambling story was that, I personally think that the petstore was only feeding them the vacation feeders so they were not used to eatting fish flakes. I never had this problem with goldfish not eatting ANYTHING before but this is the 1st time im seeing the vacation feeders used so consistently in the stores. what do u guys think?

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35 gallon tank
4 ryukin goldfish (4 - 5 inches)

5.5 Gallon Planted tank
1 halfmoon betta
2 ADFs

i'd agree with them getting used to the feeding blocks.. i guess they should use what the fish would eat at home.. not something for a temporary purpose.

Have you tried sinking pellets? I really don't like flakes for goldies as they usually don't have the correct nutrition that they need and they also encourage them to suck air at the surface of the water and this can lead to swim bladder disease.

I prefer the flakes cuz way back in elementary school I did a science fair project on which was better fish flakes or pellets n I jus wanted to see Which would get them bigger faster n the ones tat got fed the pellets died after 2 weeks!! Ever since then I've only gone with the flakes but I usually stir the water to let some since to the bottom. I didn't know about the swim bladder issue b4, thanx!

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35 gallon tank
4 ryukin goldfish (4 - 5 inches)

5.5 Gallon Planted tank
1 halfmoon betta
2 ADFs