Discoloration of common goldfish

[MaggstAa]

I have two common goldfish, a sucker fish, and a snail in our aquarium. Lately one of the goldfish has been losing his color; he used to be bright yellow on top fading to a white on the bottom, but the past few days the yellow color is almost completely gone and is just in a few small patches near his tail. Otherwise he seems healthy, eating normally, swimming and breathing normally, no change in activity etc. And all of the others in the tank have retained their color with no changes. Any idea what could be causing this?
Also, and I don't know if this is related, but lately the nitrate levels have been quite high and no matter how many water changes I do I can't seem to get it down! The nitrite, chlorine, and pH are all at the appropriate levels, but the nitrate just doesn't want to come down.


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[em1981ma]

Have you tried cleaneing your filter material. Giving sponges a good squeeze in old tank water gets rid of a lot of waste and should help lower nitrates. I recommend doing this weekly with small internal filters and once a month with external canisters. Also gravel vac will help bring it down.

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[em1981ma]

Goldfish do change colour as they get older. As this colour change happened overnight or suddenly or has it been a gradual change over a period of weeks?

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[MaggstAa]

Thanks, I'll get a gravel vac and see if that helps. I just cleaned the filter thoroughly two weeks ago but maybe doing it weekly will help. His color I just noticed a few days ago changed, it seems like it was overnight but also I'm not home during the day very often because of work so I'm not sure. Is it a possibility my sucker fish has been sucking his color off? He's very territorial and chases the others around sometimes...


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[MaggstAa]

UPDATE// so I just looked at a picture I took of the fish on the 23rd and his entire body was still bright yellow. I started noticing the discoloration around the 29th, and this morning he is completely white! Two days ago he had a bit of yellow left near his back end but now it's pretty much completely gone. So weird?? Is this something I should be worried about or does this just happen? His behavior still hasn't changed from normal...but we just bought him a couple months ago so I can't imagine he's too terribly old...


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[jlk]

Goldfish do change colors and this is perfectly normal but its not normal to lose color over a few days. It typically occurs over months or even years.

My suggestion is to keep an eye on him and work on getting your tank back to a healthy state with daily water changes. There should not be any readings for ammonia or nitrite and nitrates should be kept at a reasonable level (@20ppm or less).

What size is this tank? A sucker fish (common pleco?) and two common goldfish require quite a bit of water due to their hefty bioload and this may the main factor behind the difficulty getting your parameters under control.

 

[MaggstAa]

UPDATE:
So the one goldfish is now completely white, but still all normal behavior and eating habits etc. Everyone is acting normal, except now the other one today has developed some kind of patch that is a bit "cloudy" or "fuzzy" looking. I tried getting a picture but she is too fast. It takes up about a third of the left side of her body. Otherwise still normal behavior and healthy eating. I took everyone's advice and have been gravel vacuuming 1-2 times a week and every few days doing around a 40% water change, and just did a complete filter change tonight and reconditioned the water. I'm going to check the water parameters tomorrow and see if the nitrate levels have gone down after everything has had a chance to settle (so far no luck, hoping the complete filter clean will help). But the cloudy spot on my fish's body is worrying me, especially after the other one just completely lost color in less than a week. Is this possible velvet disease or something else?


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[Coursair]

UPDATE:
So the one goldfish is now completely white, but still all normal behavior and eating habits etc. Everyone is acting normal, except now the other one today has developed some kind of patch that is a bit "cloudy" or "fuzzy" looking. I tried getting a picture but she is too fast. It takes up about a third of the left side of her body. Otherwise still normal behavior and healthy eating. I took everyone's advice and have been gravel vacuuming 1-2 times a week and every few days doing around a 40% water change, and just did a complete filter change tonight and reconditioned the water. I'm going to check the water parameters tomorrow and see if the nitrate levels have gone down after everything has had a chance to settle (so far no luck, hoping the complete filter clean will help). But the cloudy spot on my fish's body is worrying me, especially after the other one just completely lost color in less than a week. Is this possible velvet disease or something else?


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A complete filter change ???

Careful ! Overcleaning can cause a mini cycle if you get rid of too much beneficial bacteria at once.
I don't swap out my filter pads until mine are falling apart.

All I do is rinse them in used tank water or dechlorinated tapwater. When I do swap them out, if there are multiple pads, I only swap out one at a time.

Again What size tank and how big are these fish ?


No matter how clean the water is, if goldfish and Plecos are not given sufficient room to grow, they will sicken and die much too young.


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[MaggstAa]

Sorry--by complete filter clean up I meant rinsed everything out really thoroughly in a bucket full of tank water, not replaced the entire thing. There was sooo much gunk in there! I vacuumed afterwards, and checked the water this morning, but hardly a change. The tank is around 26 gallons, I've been told before it is too small to house more than one goldfish (by the time I got this news they had already been living in there for almost a year), but usually the water levels I check weekly and they stay perfect, but only the past few weeks the nitrate refuses to go down, but all the other levels are fine (pH 7.0, chlorine 0, nitrite 0). I'm wondering since these weird scale discolorations or whatever it is has been happening the past few weeks also if any of it is related?


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[MaggstAa]

Oh yeah and the size of the goldfish are about 3 inches long, the algae eater (apparently a Chinese algae eater) and snail are tiny, about 1.5 inches each. (The snail's actual body is maybe a half inch, the shell is about 1.5 inches long.)

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[Coursair]

CAE are known for being aggressive as they get bigger. They are also known to suck the body slime off of slower fish such as goldfish. So he may be okay for now, but I would not keep him in there. Especially since the Chinese algae eater will also grow to a foot. It is probably time to rehome this goldfish into either a pond or a much larger tank.

You could temporarily repurpose a Rubbermaid bin or Rubbermaid stock tank if needed to make an indoor pond.


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[MaggstAa]

Yeah he has been in there for about a year with them and is quite territorial, but has stayed rather tiny. We had to quarantine him a few times just because he got so aggressive but let him back in after he calmed down after a few weeks (this was over the summer). We have a QT in which we can put him in time out again, do you think that would explain the cloudy spot and discoloration? (He does keep the tank spotless though!) I'd just find it odd since they have all been living together for so long...also as far as the nitrates go, I'm really drawing a blank. I feel like I've done everything possible to clean it up!


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[KevinB]

I have a 12 year old goldfish that lost it's color quite a few years ago.

In recent months, it has actually begun gaining a little gold in it's tail. My wife feels it's the shrimp we have been feeding him lately instead of flakes.

Kevin

 

[Coursair]

It's time to move these fish into a large tank or a pond. If they can't grow, they'll sicken and die young.

Stunting is NOT healthy.


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[MaggstAa]

Now the discolored one has a lump growing on his right side a bit behind the gills. His behavior is still completely normal and he seems happy, however over the past week since the lump appeared it has been growing drastically every day. I came home from work tonight and it looks like it could rupture at any moment. It looks like it is filled with white stuff underneath almost like a giant pimple?? I did some research online and could it be a bacterial boil or something? I read that rupturing usually clears it up and the fish heals over, but if this happens what will happen to my other fish? Should I QT him before it pops to avoid harming the others? I'm worried that QTing him now will stress him out too much, what should I do?? I feel like if I wait another couple hours it'll be too late!


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[jasmin1502]

I had a black moor. He went from black to bronze in over a few months


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[yahooandgoogle]

Hi my friend had a sucker fish with a goldfish. We noticed the fish loosing scales. I ask a vet she asked what my friend was feeding the sucker fish she said he eats the left overs and cleans the tank. She said the sucker fish needs it own food like a vegetable disc feed the sucker fish at night when the fish are less active. The sucker fish was starving and sucking the scales off the fish. She ended up re homing the sucker fish who is thriving now and I took the goldfish who's scales grew back I had him for years after that.
The vet said people put them in tanks thinking they eat the waste but they do need their own food.
Hope that helps


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[yahooandgoogle]

Sorry just read your comment I would quarantine him just in case. With some of his tank water. Maybe add an air bubbler to help


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