Bump on Goldfish

[Dashboy1998]

I'm currently fish sittings for my parents, they have 3 goldfish in a 5 gallon tank and by what I can tell the last time the tank was cleaned was but in October when did it same for when the last chem reading was.

One of the fish has a white looking bump on it's (Not sure of sex) side.

While normal when I clean tanks I do about a 25%-50% water change for this one I cleaned the whole thing, the filter was from August and like I said earlier the tank was last cleaned in October. I have a 1 gallon bowl I can put the sick fish in if I need to.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Delapool]

Hi, welcome

If I'm seeing correctly then possibly a tumour or viral would be my thought.

http://badmanstropicalfish.com/fish_palace/tropicalfish_disease_identification_1.html#VIRAL

It's nice you are fish sitting the tank.

It sounds like you might be aware of this but I would suspect the infection trigger is the cramped conditions for the fish coupled with a lack of water changes. Regretfully those comets belong in a pond to properly grow.

Personally I wouldn't consider them feasible and would consider a betta more suitable for that size tank. Daily water changes and you could try a salt water dip short term.

Long term I'd re-home elsewhere.

Hope this helps.

Edit - also swapping out old fish food to a good, freshly-opened product may help as well.

 

[Dashboy1998]

Yeah I figured that's what caused it. I'll just start doing daily water changes for them until they get a bigger tank. Actually they have a 55 gallon tank they're not using might see if it'll still hold water and use that if possible.

Thanks for the help.

 

[Delapool]

One of the local guys here has reported success with columnaris bacterial infections by starting with a salt dip for up to 2 minutes (or less if fish can't handle it). If salt helps there it might help with this.

You could try say a 1% dip and increasing to a higher dose next day if it goes ok. This might just clean up the infection enough to allow the fish to recover and is cheap to try. No guarantees. The tank water conditions would need to be improved at the same time I've found.

The larger tank sounds worth a try. Every so often here I'll see people getting rid of tanks when they shift or something.


http://www.theaquariumwiki.com/Salt

Longer term I'd look at a pond. A neighbour had one full-grown fancy fantail in a 55gal and tank was fully stocked.