Modern thinking on keeping goldfish?

On Thu, 6 Apr 2006 17:24:56 -0500, Koi-Lo wrote in another thread:
And of all things contains 3 GF which would soon kill themselves with
ammonia in something that small.

That reminded me...

My brother wants to get a fishtank. I recommended a tank like my
Juwel Rekord 70 which I found a great "starter" tank, not too
big or small, all neat and self contained equipment and easy to
use. He is 25 but has learning difficulties and so he lives with
my mother who would be supervising. I said I thought it would be
fine for him to have a tank, as long as he didn't get tempted to
overfeed.

But he wants to keep goldfish and not tropicals So I trotted
out the usual "5 gallons of water for 1 inch of goldfish...
tropicals are prettier and you can have more of them..." etc and
my mother simply said "well, you used to have six goldfish in a
small tank in your room and they lived for years. Do they still
have foam filters?"

And true enough I did have a tank in my room, later my brother's,
as a child. It was about 2 foot on a metal stand, and held 6 fish,
such as comet, shubunkin, black moor, oranda, and two I've forgotten.
I think one started as a fairground fish in a bag. Don't think we
knew about cycling either.

They survived everything, including when the ceiling fell into
the tank - one was crushed and died, one flipped out of the tank
but was ok when put back in(!) and the others were all fine although
they can't have liked having a chunk of plaster in there for hours.
The tank had a small air driven filter with a round sponge in it.
There was a small layer of gravel on the bottom. They ate flake daily.
And there was an algae magnet to clean with. And that was the lot.
My mother did clean the tank out but not that often, maybe once
a month or something.

Those fish lived for years. So she won't listen to me saying that
goldfish don't belong in small tanks in big numbers, yaddayadda.
And to be fair she can claim experience of goldfish, I have none!

So... am I scaremongering? Or going too far in promoting perfect
conditions? Or is there some reason that 20 years later, goldfish
can't cope in small amounts of water? Are they less hardy now?

I'm not meaning to question modern thinking, but I would like to
know what I should say to answer my mother or advise my brother.

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