Goldfish Wants To Eat All The Time How Often To Feed?

[Gold-Fisher]

I have a single small ornamental goldfish in a three gallon tank, this fish wants to eat everytime I approach the tank, it starts getting excited and literally begs to be fed like a pet dog, is this normal behaviour?

Aquarium guy tolds me not to feed it more than once a day and that too just two flakes of food or a few pellets, food container says to feed fish two to three times a day.

 

[Anguilla82]

fish tend to associate someone coming to the tank with food pretty quickly but don't be fooled into thinking that its always needing food.
easiest thing to do is overfeed, especially bad in a small tank like yours. i'd say once a day with a small amount is fine.

 

[Gold-Fisher]

But whenever I give it food it eats it all which is like five times a day.

 

[Anguilla82]

if food is available, they will eat it, but all you will end up with is poor water quality (due to excessive waste from the fish) and a very overweight fish!
best to limit the amount of food intake to once or twice a day.

 

[three-fingers]

I have a single small ornamental goldfish in a three gallon tank

Just checking, so don't take offence, but you do realise that the only small goldfish are young goldfish - and stunted goldfish....

Regardless of what the people at the pet store said, that goldfish is going to need about a 20gallon tank pretty soon.
Goldfish are effectively domesticated carp - they are still messy fish that grow big when not stunted .

Check out these links: goldfish tanks, stunting and an indication of how goldfish grow.