Critically Endangered
The last of the yellow series within a series.
The wild population of these fish has dropped by over 90% from the 1970's to the 1990's due to over fishing, predominantly in China. They are a farmed but are expensive to feed because they are carnivorous. In 2013 there was 105,000 tonnes of this fish produced. Farms have also had outbreaks of a bacterial infection. The fish is considered important enough that it had its genome mapped...the 200th organism to have that done in fact.
We had pet goldfish in a 60 gallon tank. We hadn't intended to get fish, but my son won them at a fair and I was not about to tell a 2 year old he couldn't have something I secretly wanted too! We got the tank on Craigslist, which if you don't have it in your area could be thought of as an online garage sale. The feeder fish we got at the fair lived for approximately 10 years and were around 6-10 inches long depending on the fish. Sadly, one died (it had been injured by getting accidentally shoved into the filter by a tank mate if I remember right, this was many years ago), and the replacement fish we got seemed healthy at first. but something must have been wrong because about 3 weeks later, it died, and then the rest of the fish began to die off. We tried creating a fish hospital and did everything we could to no avail. I do miss having the goldfish, it was quite relaxing to come home and watch them swimming and they were very friendly.