Ammonia Poisoning

[Aquarium Freak]

Hey all....I posted a LONG time back about my grandma and her goldfish. She has 4 Fully grown comets and 1 fully grown shubunkin. These fish are huge and I mean HUGE. In the summer they are out in the pond but it is to cold here and have to be brought in to winter. These fish are all kept in a 33g with two aquaclear 300s on it. The water is still murky but not to bad and she does PWC of 50% once a week but this isn't good enough as the fish are getting ammonia poisoning. This is the first time in the 6 years they have been brought in. We went out looking for a pool to put them in and use the pond filter but it is the middle of winter and no placce has pools lol. We have been adding ammonia remover which is helping a bit. What can we do to help these poor fish out. I explained to her how they are being poisoned and she feels really bad about it. She wants to put the fish out of there misery but is there any other options first before we have to do that? I will try to post pics later on.
Thanks So Much

 

[DeFeKt]

PWC of 50% once a week

Daily PWC

 

[squawkbert]

Unless the pond freezes SOLID, top to bottom, it probably isn't too cold for 'em to stay out there & go dormant for the winter. Lots of people do this around here. Goldfish under ice - not a problem.

 

[ladycage]

you should try to adding fliter floss (polyesther fiber fill) to your filter and ammonia removing media to the filter. AmQuel is a good ammonia remover to add to the water.

 

[Aquarium Freak]

The Pond Freezes Through I Can Asure You That! I Live In Canada! Eh`

 

[BillD]

Check out the farm supply stores for stock tanks.

 

[DepotFish]

Yes, try large rubbermaid bins, you may need two. Summer stuff just hit the shelves in WI this week, and I assume other area will follow suit. No plastic pools yet, but stores may have the blow up ones in a box.

 

[jsoong]

My local home Depot & Rona keep their pond liners & stuff all year long. Yes, they are outside in the snow, but you can get at them.

You can make a 2x4 box & drape a pond liner in it to make your winter quarters. You will need something like 100-200 gal for those fish. Failing that, try using big 50-100 gal storage bins & your pond filter.

While the fish is in the 30 gal, I would suggest:
1. Drop the temp and STOP feeding. Lower temp decreases the fish's metabolic rate & decrease NH3 production. Ditto for no feeding. If you can get the temp dowm to 4-5 C, you can get the fish to hibernate. Even putting the tank in a cold room in the cellar will help. I am not advocating this, but some guy hibernates his pond fish in little rubbermaid containers in his fridge. If you can get the fish to hiberante, you won't need a lot of water.
2. Do LOTs of water change - 50% or more daily until you get the NH3 down, and remove as much MULM from the gravel as possible. <Actually, golds can tolerate 100% changes pretty well, so you can't overdo the water changes! If it was me, I'd do a couple 80% changes today to get the levels down quickely.>
3. Use an ammonia binder like Prime as a stop gap.
4. Add some salt - you will run into nitrite posioning soon .... in addition to the NH3. A little salt (like 0.05%) protects the fish from NO2.

Big comets & kois are too nice to be put down without a fight .... so I would do that only as a last resort. Even if you have to do daily pwc, it won't be too long before spring is here. And with global warming .... this might just be a matter of a few weeks! <Wishful thinking I know, but I am sick of our -20 weather. >

 

[Aquarium Freak]

It has gotten to bad and we had to put the largest fish the beautiful shubunkin to sleeep We feel really bad but hope this will help the bioload out alot. Thanks fr all the help