Bear with me here because this has been an ongoing thing, so this is a timeline.
I have a 40 gallon tank that we spent the time to cycle properly. It was my first fish and I wanted to do it right. We waited, and waited, and finally when it was cycled we got a large fancy goldfish in January. After two months without issue, we decided to get our second (and final) fancy goldfish for the tank so we'd have a pair.
3/19 - We get Ghost, fancy #2. Beans (our first fish) was very shy at first, and he hid from Ghost for the first two days.
4/01 - We wake up one morning to Beans relentlessly chasing, biting, and pinning Ghost down throughout the tank. By the looks of her fins, which were extremely torn up, he had been doing it all night. We got a divider that day, thinking maybe she was just smaller than him still, or that we needed to feed them smaller amount more frequently. We wanted to wait until her fins had healed until we removed the divider again.
4/04 - The first black spots show up on Ghost. Tested all levels and they were perfect. Beans was looking fine, and both fish were active and behaving normally.
4/10 - Ghost starts pineconing. I woke up that morning and it was pretty bad, when there had been no issue the day before. I immediately went and bought a 20 gallon hospital tank. My first though was an infection from Beans tearing her up.
She got transferred to the hospital tank that afternoon, and she went through a round of antibiotics and the pineconing subsided over 5 days. Throughout the whole treatment she was active, but the black spots were growing.
Given that she was in a tank being treated with antibiotics, there was no biological filter, so I did tests religiously, along with daily water changes, treating the water with Prime. The levels were always safe. It's a mostly bare-bottom tank with some sand in one corner because she loves to sift through it. It's pushed around and vacuumed every day.
4/17 - I notice some white fuzz on her fins, I treat for fungus, and it's gone within two days.
We've also been noticing at this point that we never see waste in her tank, and if we do it's very, very small. We thought that she might also have intestinal issues so we switched from sinking pellets to peas for a couple days, which seemed to help. So we started alternating between pellets to peas every 4 days or so.
However it's been a month, and the black spots are still changing, getting better, then worse, growing, shrinking. I honestly don't know what to do at this point. I really believe it's not ammonia/nitrite poisoning, I work from home and never miss a daily test or water change. Her left side also seems larger and possibly bloated in comparison to her right side.
Up until today she has been active and swimming around, eating normally. Today she has very little interest in food and extremely listless. I'm worried we're near the end for her.
I have a 40 gallon tank that we spent the time to cycle properly. It was my first fish and I wanted to do it right. We waited, and waited, and finally when it was cycled we got a large fancy goldfish in January. After two months without issue, we decided to get our second (and final) fancy goldfish for the tank so we'd have a pair.
3/19 - We get Ghost, fancy #2. Beans (our first fish) was very shy at first, and he hid from Ghost for the first two days.
4/01 - We wake up one morning to Beans relentlessly chasing, biting, and pinning Ghost down throughout the tank. By the looks of her fins, which were extremely torn up, he had been doing it all night. We got a divider that day, thinking maybe she was just smaller than him still, or that we needed to feed them smaller amount more frequently. We wanted to wait until her fins had healed until we removed the divider again.
4/04 - The first black spots show up on Ghost. Tested all levels and they were perfect. Beans was looking fine, and both fish were active and behaving normally.
4/10 - Ghost starts pineconing. I woke up that morning and it was pretty bad, when there had been no issue the day before. I immediately went and bought a 20 gallon hospital tank. My first though was an infection from Beans tearing her up.
She got transferred to the hospital tank that afternoon, and she went through a round of antibiotics and the pineconing subsided over 5 days. Throughout the whole treatment she was active, but the black spots were growing.
Given that she was in a tank being treated with antibiotics, there was no biological filter, so I did tests religiously, along with daily water changes, treating the water with Prime. The levels were always safe. It's a mostly bare-bottom tank with some sand in one corner because she loves to sift through it. It's pushed around and vacuumed every day.
4/17 - I notice some white fuzz on her fins, I treat for fungus, and it's gone within two days.
We've also been noticing at this point that we never see waste in her tank, and if we do it's very, very small. We thought that she might also have intestinal issues so we switched from sinking pellets to peas for a couple days, which seemed to help. So we started alternating between pellets to peas every 4 days or so.
However it's been a month, and the black spots are still changing, getting better, then worse, growing, shrinking. I honestly don't know what to do at this point. I really believe it's not ammonia/nitrite poisoning, I work from home and never miss a daily test or water change. Her left side also seems larger and possibly bloated in comparison to her right side.
Up until today she has been active and swimming around, eating normally. Today she has very little interest in food and extremely listless. I'm worried we're near the end for her.
