Editorial policy

What we publish

gold.fish publishes three kinds of content, and labels them so you always know which you are reading. Care and aquarium guides explain how to keep goldfish well, from the biology up. Health pages are symptom-led and educational. Buying guides are commercial content, kept separate from the first two and marked as such.

Accuracy and sources

Every page is written from established husbandry knowledge: the accumulated, well-documented practice of experienced goldfish keepers, breeders and aquatic veterinarians, together with the underlying biology of Carassius auratus. Where recommendations genuinely vary between competent sources, we say so and present a range with its assumptions, rather than inventing a single rule.

We do not fabricate statistics, studies or expert quotations. If a figure appears on this site, it is either widely accepted (such as the 43-year lifespan recorded by Guinness World Records) or clearly presented as an approximation. When we are unsure, we say "roughly", "often" or "in our view", and mean it.

Figures that recur across the site have one page that owns them, and the others defer to it rather than restating a number of their own. We check them against each other, because a common way a reference site becomes wrong is not a bad figure but two good ones drifting apart. Where a figure genuinely differs by context — filter turnover in a tank and in a pond differ by roughly a factor of ten, for sound reasons — the page stating the second one explains why, instead of leaving a reader to decide which page to believe.

Review and dates

Each guide carries a published date and a reviewed date. Where the two differ, the page has been checked since it went up; where they match, the review is the one it had before publication. Reviews look for factual errors, outdated positions and internal inconsistency with the rest of the site. Corrections are made in place; where a correction changes advice materially, the updated date is set.

Health content

Health pages are an educational resource, not a substitute for veterinary diagnosis or treatment. They describe what a symptom may indicate, which water quality checks to make first, when veterinary help is appropriate, and what not to do. They deliberately do not give medication dosages, specific salt concentrations, or confident diagnoses, because those depend on the individual fish, the product and the water volume, and because getting them wrong hurts fish. We will not publish content that gives dangerous certainty.

Commercial content

Buying guides recommend products in categories that matter for goldfish. Each recommendation is labelled with its basis: researched (summarised from manufacturer specifications and widely reported keeper experience), editorial opinion (our view on a category), or tested by us (hands-on use in our own tanks). We never claim testing we have not done. Some links may become affiliate links; this never influences which products we recommend, and any sponsored placement will be disclosed on the page where it appears. See the affiliate disclosure.

Tone

Many readers arrive with a goldfish in a bowl, a fish that looks unwell, or advice from a shop that turned out to be wrong. We write to improve outcomes for the fish, not to win arguments with the person keeping it. Direct, kind, specific.

Independence

gold.fish is independent of manufacturers, retailers and breeders. We do not accept payment for editorial coverage, and we do not allow advertisers to influence editorial content.

Corrections

If you spot an error, tell us. We would rather fix a page than defend it.