Simple Elementary Word Problem

Question

I'm trying to help my little sister out but I can't seem to figure it out.

Here is the question:

John fish weight 8 times as much as her parakeet. Together the pet's weight 63 ounces. How much does the fish weight?

The only answer I can think of is 7.875.

Answer 1

Let the weight of the parakeet be $x$. Then John's fish is eight times that weight: $8x.$

Then the weight of both of them together is $x+8x=63$.

Simplifying the left side, we get $9x=63\implies x=7$

We can even check that this is right. Since we said that $x=7$, this means the weight of the parakeet is 7 ounces. The fish weighs eight times more, so $8\times 7=56$. Then together, they weigh $7+56=63$ ounces.

So, the fish weighs $8x=8\times 7=56$ ounces.