Female, very round belly, two dark brown spots near the anal fin.

If she is ready to pop, you will also see a small bump there.

Goldfish do not get pregnant they become gravid. This means they are getting ready to lay eggs. They do not carry live babies in their bellies because they are hatched from eggs like birds.This is why there is no such thing as a pregnant goldfish. When they are gravid, they have a slightly stretched look in the belly area and they may appear fatter.

Also, females can lay eggs without a male being present. The eggs will be clear or unfertilized without a male in the tank.

If you want to see if your goldfish is gravid, just wait a little while and you may see her release eggs. It could also be that she has a big belly from eating too much or she may have a medical condition called dropsy- also known as bloat. This condition is very serious and can cause the fish to turn on its side slightly or even completely upside down with its belly swollen out. Their scales also protrude from the body and their eyes sometimes stick out because of increased pressure in the abdomen. It is difficult to treat and is often fatal.

It's also possible that the breed of your goldfish will cause it to have a big belly. Examples of big bellied breeds are orandas, Black moors, lionheads, ranchus and ryukins. There are many more.

i have a fish but i dont know much information about the fish the fishes color is gold i dont know what type of fish it is but i dont know if my fish is fat or if my fish is pregnant i want to be prepared its in a fish tank with 3 other fishes they get along great! But i want to know if its pregnant or not

They have to be mature enough to mate and when males are in breeding mode, they show breeding tubercles on their gills covers among other places. Females will look like their bellies are quite full, from their eggs, before they are ready to spawn. Males will chase females around and usually it is not that difficult to tell they are in the mood to spawn.

But they don’t have ‘baby fish’. They only lay eggs, like most fish. Also, like most fish, they will eat newborn fry, so if you want the little ones to survive, you may have to remove some and raise them for a few months separate from the parents, until they are large enough to be left alone by the adult fish.

Most of them don't get pregnant, they lay eggs. Depending on the species the eggs will be on the bottom, on plant leaves, on the glass, in a nest, in a cluster or spread out, or any other number of options (including in the filter of your pump if you have one...)

Only a few species, such as platys and guppies, bear live young, and their pregnanacy can be spotted in the usual way of noticing the large belly.

As for getting to that point, most egg laying fish have the female lay the eggs and then the males will spray clouds of semen in the general direction of the eggs.

Live bearing fish tend to have intercourse in the usual way.

Look for the gravid spot on the fish's abdomen near the rear tail. The spot should appear large and dark when her eggs are fertilized. You will know your fish is close to giving birth when the spot becomes nearly black. Some fish may show white spots instead of black.

The “weather” has to be right. Meaning the water and tank conditions have to very close to natural breeding conditions for her to lay eggs. Goldfish are called coldwater fish because they prefer 60°F water. So, you don't normally need a fish heater with only goldfish. But you might for breeding.

As the water temperature rises in nature, as in the late springtime, goldfish will become ready to spawn when the water temp reaches about 72°F. If your tank’s water is too warm or too cool, it's less likely to happen.

Experts say you can mimic conditions if you add cooler water to lower the water temp and leave lights off for a couple hours longer than usual, adding a few more minutes of light every day. Add a bit of warmer water every day to raise it 3 degrees each day. Or use an aquarium heater to gradually heat the water 2–3 degrees a day, until it reaches 72°F or 20°C. It should induce her to lay eggs.

Meanwhile you will be feeding frozen or freeze-dried brine shrimp to the goldfish in addition to its flakes. When food is rich and plentiful, they feel there is resources available for offspring.

Room is another thing to consider. Goldfish will not crowd themselves out like guppies will. Therefore, putting your pair into a new larger tank with fresh cool water (with a fourth of the water from your old aquarium included) and then raising the temp as described above, and feeding well, should get her to lay clumps of eggs all over the tank. You will probably have to remove the adults, though, and put them back in their old tank, or they may eventually eat all the eggs.

When the fry hatch, some will naturally die shortly. The strong survives. You can grind goldfish flakes into powder between your fingers, and brush the powder on the top of the water for the fry. Just a pinch three times a day is enough.

After 4 weeks, you can make a judgment on if you can add your adult fish to the new tank, or continue with 2 tanks.

I’m sorry to tell you that no female tetras can lay eggs that will hatch without being fertilized at the moment when they leave her body.

If you want to breed tetras and try to rear some fry then one method is to have six or more alone in a 12 gallon aquarium with a substrate of large gravel (Not sand.) Don’t have any other fish in there at all and exclude all snails.

Condition your tetras with good quality food; check that some are becoming plump but at least two are slim and very active, then siphon out half the water (and use it to set up a second aquarium that is big enough for the adult tetras.) Top up the spawning tank with three pints of slightly cooler, filtered water. Don’t drop the temperature more than 4 degrees.

If the fish are mature adults spawning should start quite quickly; spawning behaviour differs with the variety - Glowlight tetras swim side by side and then both fish do a barrel roll! (It looks beautiful with the right lighting.) Once they stop spawning move the adults to the second aquarium. Put an air-stone at each end of the spawning tank and wait.

Any fish, including the parents, will eat tetra eggs and fry. However, with the set-up described there is a good chance that the fertilised eggs will drop into the narrow gaps in the gravel, where the adults cannot reach them. The eggs hatch there and you will see the fry above the gravel in a few days; don’t add food until you see them, but then they will take commercial food for egg-laying fish.

The male goldfish is attracted to the chemicals the female goldfish makes when ready to lay eggs. Not only male goldfish like it, but also male frogs, who sometimes try to grab the goldfish in amplexus when they detect that chemical coming off her, even though the molecules are not precisely the same as the one in frogs. The male can’t grab her, but he chases her around. Often there are a number of males chasing, sometimes there is also more than one female ready at once. A very typical spawning time is first morning light, and the chase begins. When the male goldfish detects the chemicals coming off the female when the eggs are dropped, then his body automatically releases milt, or fish semen, into the water as the eggs are laid. These sperms swim through the water to the egg in a way not dissimilar to the way sperms swim to an egg inside the body of a mammal, but there is more trial and error involved as it all happens outside the body. On the other hand there are still millions and millions of sperm, and dozens of eggs. In the case of cod there is more space involved and there we are talking about thousands of eggs. So obviously that increases the probability that enough eggs do get fertilised in order to keep the species going.

In the case of some egg-laying species, nests are built which can be anything from hollows in the substrate as some cichlids have to ornate nests like sticklebacks make, all this in order to contain the arena in which this fertilisation lottery takes place and thus increase the chance of successful fertilisations. There are also livebearing fishes like guppy which shoot sperm packages into the females with their gonopodia.

In the case of some fish the eggs and the young are eaten by the parents, and this is the case with goldfish too, while other fishes practice brood care, in some cases the male taking the larger part of that work and sometimes banishing females from that job altogether.

In some species, such as some reef wrasses and also the Lake Tanganyika cichlid Neolamprologus brichardi, even older brothers and sisters lend a hand, or rather fin, in looking after younger siblings. The cichlids of both South America and Africa contain certain species which mouthbrood, looking after the young in their mouths, and seahorses have a pouch like a marsupial, the male only, and this is the home of the baby seahorses until they can fend for themselves in the reef.

She'll be laying eggs, which will then be fertilised by the male, leave them until they've finished. Add as many plants and objects to the tank which the eggs will stick to. Then either move the adult fish or the eggs to another tank with hopefully a cycled filter, if it is not cycled add some media from the filter in that tank. In the tank with the eggs be sure to add plenty of aeration to keep them moving and supply them with oxygen, they also need a water level of 5-10cm to begin with so they can reach the surface after hatching. They will hatch a day or two later, then begin to feed them the next day with brine shrimp. Do some research and that should do you fine.

Common signs of illness in goldfish are:

Ragged fins.

Visible sores or white spots on the body.

Gasping for air at the top of the tank.

Difficulty staying right side up—swimming or floating or lying on the tank floor upside down or tilted onto their side or hanging vertically in the water.

Clamped fins—dorsal fin is held flat against the back, tail fins are held close together like the blades of closed scissors. (It is normal for fins to be in any of those positions momentarily as fish move their fins to navigate through the water. But if the fish is holding its fins in a clamped position continuously, that's an indication the fish isn't feeling well.)

Being too weak to swim and so being sucked up against the intake tube of the filter.

A severely ill fish that's floating upside down or lying motionless on the tank floor or sucked up against the filter can appear to be very convincingly dead even if they're not. Check carefully for any movement of the mouth or gills before giving up and dumping the fish. I generally put dead-looking fish in a hospital tank with clean water and a few drops of methylene blue, and give them an hour or so to show signs of life before I conclude for sure that they're dead. I've had fish that I was pretty sure were dead, no detectable movement at all, surprise me by reviving with this treatment.

Most of these problems are caused by poor water quality. The treatment is an immediate water change, with clean dechlorinated water and one teaspoon of plain no-additive salt per gallon of water. Check the label on the salt carefully and make sure there's no iodine, anti-caking agents, or anything else other than pure salt. (I keep Morton canning and pickling salt on hand for this.) Dissolve the salt completely in a separate jar of water before pouring it in with the fish.

That's the emergency intervention. Once you've done that, call a local aquarium shop (not a general pet store that has some fish in it and some staff that have been trained to try to sell you products, but a specialized aquarium store whose staff have lots of training and experience in fish care) and/or find yourself a good online aquarium forum. Introduce yourself, describe the situation, show pictures of your sick fish, and hopefully someone will help you figure out what caused the problem and how to remedy it.

I have a different problem. My female is spreading eggs. And sometimes the males chase her. But I am not sure the males have milt or sperm yet 🤷 Today. I will let the heater slowly raise the temperature to 79 degrees Fahrenheit. And after I come home from work in the morning, I will keep an eye on the water. If it becomes white and cloudy, I will know the males have fertilized the eggs naturally. These are precious ranchus for me, each is 200$ plus. Grade AAA Kirin Ranchus. So I will not risk injuring them with hans breeding.☝️ There are even better ranchus called Dragon Scale Ranchus, I don’t have them yet

They can’t have ‘babies’ because they can’t get pregnant. They are egg layers.

Female Glofish can become gravid, which means, full of eggs, but the eggs will never become baby fish ( fry) unless she lays them and a male fish then spread milt over them to fertilize them. So you need both genders and near ideal conditions for the fish to even think about mating behaviours.

While it’s possible that fish would spawn in a fish tank and if the Glofish are the Danio type, it’s more likely to happen than with the Tetra or Barb types, the parent fish will eat their own eggs, so not many eggs get a shot at hatching in the first place. And those that hatch are usually are eaten too, since the parent fish eat fry as well as eggs.

Most fish provide zero parental care and almost all fish will eat fry.

There is no definite time that the goldfish stays pregnant but they carry the eggs until they are fertilized by the male.

After release and fertilization, goldfish eggs hatch within two to seven days with the right water conditions and requirements.

If you notice that your goldfish is a little rounder and plumper, it could be that your female is carrying eggs.

First, try to rule out other causes for the change in your goldfish’s shape. Be aware that they can swell from illness, such as dropsy, or from being overfed.

First you have to know which is a boy and which is a girl. If you have a few females, I would look for similar traits to pinpoint who the mother is. Or… she's the one that WAS a bit fat, and now isnt. Guppy fry take awhile to show their true colors 😉 so if sexing your fish doesn't do the trick you might have to wait for them to grow into their colors and patterns and that might help. But i also bought a pregnant molly and she gave birth to three different kinds of fry. She had cobra, tequila sunrise and lyretail! Girl got around lol. Her fry and she reproduced too and all I can say is that I knew I'd missed the chance to put her in the birthing net because she looked normal. Thinner.

In an ideal world you would have her in a larger trap you can make yourself, if you can find some pliable netting material that has holes large enough for her babies to escape, but not her.

Then you place your homemade barrier in another tank, with a sponge filter and a heater, and a cover. (No gravel or decorations, or obviously any fish.) This tank only needs to be 3–5 US gallons.

After she has had her 20 or 40 or even more fry, depending on her size, she can be returned to her tank. Make sure she recovers and eats her food.

Sometimes the fry are too big to go through the slots on the bottom of a pet store trap. In the case of a fine net trap that has no holes, there is no escape for the babies.

The mother Molly is just as likely to eat her young, so it's important that you protect them from her as well until they are big enough not to be swallowed by her.

It's best to raise the fry in their own small tank. I learned that from an old man that had many strains of beautiful show winning Swordtails.

He taught me two valuable tips as a child. Bombard them with food. He did this by keeping different broods in separate 2–3 gallon bare tanks on shelves in his basement. He used live baby Brine Shrimp and a small amount of quality flake food.

The second thing he taught me was to do a partial, 10–20% water change on the babies daily to remove waste food and chemicals that make them grow slower. Always use a water conditioner, and follow the instructions.

His tips served me well. I won many awards and trophies with my livebearers decades later when he was gone.

My personal third tip is to make your own frozen food, and have live cultures on hand to feed your fish. Fresh food means everything for condition, size and colour.

You may not be ready to use these tips today but I hope you will when you are ready!

The female Goldfish can lay up to 10,000 eggs. This doesn’t mean all of the eggs will produce fry. Only a small amount of them will hatch an offspring for a few reasons. A male won’t fertilize all of the eggs, some eggs wont survive, some will get eaten by other fish and even their parents will eat the eggs both for food and/or to protect them. Some fish will protect their fry or eggs by sucking them in to their mouth without eating or harming them then spit them back out in a safe place or when it’s safe again in the same spot (nest).

You will find mixed opinions and suggestions about what I’ve said in the next paragraph with pregnant fish. Some will say to move the pregnant fish, others will suggest as I have. This is my opinion and what I suggest. What you choose to do is 100% your choice. Do what you think is best. I personally don’t do anything at all different unless I have to when a pair of my aquatic pets are reproducing. I let nature run it’s course unless I have to do something.

If a fish pair becomes pregnant in a community tank all of the other fish should be removed from that tank and placed in another. It’s best to keep the pregnant fish in their usual habitat because they’ve probably already formed a nest for the eggs or fry in that tank. They might not create another nest if they’re the ones that get moved and the eggs or fry won’t survive if they don’t.

To be successful in keeping fish we should have several aquariums. At least one that’s empty we use for sequestering fish in this situation or when they’re sick so whatever illness or infection they may have doesn’t spread to the other animals in the tank. The sequester tank doesn’t need to be a big one, just big enough and adequate to house the biggest fish we have. It also doesn’t need substrate or decorations or anything other than a filter and water quality levels balanced appropriate for the fish we have.
Substrate and decorations can house infections, viruses, and illnesses fish and other aquatic life are subject to contracting.

Here is some information on what to expect, how to tell when a Goldfish is pregnant, and suggestions on what we can do:

The above article suggests moving the pregnant fish and the eggs to a different tank. I don’t agree with moving the eggs. Taking the eggs out of the water even for a second can damage or kill them. They’re extremely fragile. In my opinion we shouldn’t touch or do anything with the eggs. Let the parents do whatever it is they do with them.

It's best to have hiding places. Moving a fish too close to birth could cause stress which could make her give birth prematurely. Altho some fry are dumb and will hang around the topwater until they are eaten, the strongest swimmers and hiders survive.

About the net… Unless it's a very tight weave, the fry will get themselves caught and hurt in the netting. What I did was scoop out (with a juice glass ) as many fry as I could after she'd given birth. It was usually in the night when she dropped them, but the next morning there would be less than a dozen left. I raised them for 2 or 3 weeks in an open jar. When they got their color and looked like fish, I added them back to the tank.