Sparkle was able to survive for hours behind the dresser of the tank, covered in dog hair and fluff, according to his owner Paula Dunster.
Miss Dunster, 46, noticed her 18-month-old pet was missing when she could only spot one goldfish swimming in the tank.
When she asked her partner Malcolm Roy if he had removed Sparkle, he assured her he had not.
Mother-of-four Miss Dunster, of Redcar, North Yorkshire, said: We didn’t know what had happened really but I thought I would get another fish because the other one was on his own.
“The man in the pet shop told me he might have jumped out of the tank so when we got back home I looked behind the dresser that the tank was on and I could see him, absolutely covered in dog hair and fluff.”
She did not have the heart to flush Sparkle away, so decided to clean him off under a tap. As she did so, Sparkle began breathing.
“I was really shocked and my daughter said it was a miracle. It had been down there for so long covered in all of the hair,” Miss Dunster said.
That’s happened to me too, when I was little I had a pet goldfish ‘Sammy’ in a tank with a open lid. One day we found that he’d jumped out of the tank into (lol) a garbage can that was next to the tank. I don’t know how long he was there, but he was swimming around fine after we put him back.
That’s a really cruel way to keep a goldfish. Its suicide attempt was foiled, it was calm and happy to die. Where’s the other fish? Oh yeah, it probably died. Soon to be followed by this one.
i had an algee eater that committed suicide that way. i found him several days later, picking him up thinking it was a dried leaf….
I thought we were the only ones with a goldfish named sparkle. My 4 yr old named them…sparkle and shine. Too funny.