The classic round goldfish bowl has been used for hundreds, even thousands of years – to keep fancy goldfish in the home. They are attractive, cheap to buy, easy to clean and show off fish well making an attractive display. And yet fewer people than ever choose a goldfish bowl over an aquarium. Why is this?
Aquariums of course come in all sorts of sizes and shapes which means the fish keeper has a wide choice when it comes to housing and almost any home can find a space for an aquarium of some size.
However it’s not so much the aesthetics which lead most people to choose an aquarium over a goldfish bowl as the practical elements. Quite simply when looking for aquarium pet supplies an aquarium makes it far easier to successfully keep goldfish and other coldwater fish than a bowl.
The first issue to consider is the volume of water. Water naturally warms and cools over time; cooler during the night and warmer during the day. But all sorts of other things can also make a difference. A window left open. A heater turned on. These fluctuations in water temperature can have a negative effect on your fish and the larger the change and the quicker it happens the more stressful it is for fish.
An aquarium typically holds more water which acts as a “buffer” and means temperature changes are less extreme and are felt more slowly leading to happier, healthier fish.
In an aquarium it is also far easier to fit hardware like filters to keep the water clean and pumps to aerate the water which are typically absent in a goldfish bowl further making keeping goldfish far easier.
Lastly there is the size of the surface area of the water to consider. The larger the surface area, the more oxygen can enter the water and the more fish you can safely keep in a given area. With the shape of a goldfish bowl, the top is typically very narrow, minimizing the amount of oxygen that can enter the water. Proportionately the aquarium has a larger surface area of water and so your fish will find it easier to take up the oxygen they really need to breathe.
