An Australian couple spent a large sum of money on the surgery of their 10-year-old pet goldfish George.

Over the past one year, George developed a large growth on his head. Veterinarian Tristan Rich said that the fish was not able to eat or swim properly and was "really suffering", Reuters reports.

Rich said that since the fish was weak and was facing trouble "getting around", he was "getting bullied by the other fish."

George's owner, Pip Joyce, said: "Didn't join in as much in their afternoon party games and stuff, you know. ... He never really said much to us."

Tristan Rich had put forth two options in front of the owner family, either remove the head tumor or put the fish to sleep to rid him of his misery; and needless to say - they chose the former.

The veterinarian further said that the operation on the 80-gram fish was 45-minute long and was "quite fiddly", The Telegraph reports. Water from the pond where George dwelled was brought to the surgery in buckets to feed into a tube through his mouth that helped keep his gills wet, KCTV5 Newsreports.

"It was quite a large tumor - we had to scrape it off his skull. When it was all done we woke him up in a clean bucket of water ... he came through it swimmingly," Rich added.

One of the owners - Lyn Orton - said that she hated seeing George suffer. "We love pulling up a chair and just sitting next to the pond, it's so relaxing just to watch them. They're not just things in the water ... they're characters," Orton told Melbourne's Herald Sun newspaper.

George is recovering "swimmingly well" after the emergency surgery, conducted on him to remove a life-threatening head tumor.