My fancy goldfish seem to be dying off one by one, weeks apart, and I can't figure out why.
It starts with them appearing to be slightly bent/curved and having difficulty swimming. This quickly escalates, they become more bent over and lay at the bottom of the tank until they can no longer seem to move at all. Shortly after this they die.
This has happened to 3 out of 5 fish in my tank, across several weeks. The first one appeared to also have slightly cloudy eyes. The second had no additional symptoms that I noticed. The third had a cotton wool like substance on it's tail - this seemed to appear after the initial onset of the other symptoms.
The tank is 200L with an APS 2000EF+ filter providing 9w UV sterilisation, fitted with bioballs, active carbon, filter foams, and more recently an API Nitrazorb pouch.
The tank was set up a couple of months ago using Tetra Safe Start when the fish were added - 4 moors (2 black, 1 red/white, 1 panda) and 1 oranda.
During the first couple of weeks there was an outbreak of ick, which I treated with salt - 3 tablespoons per 20L built up over a few days. Within a week all symptoms disappeared.
A couple of weeks after this the first fish died. I stepped up my cleaning and water changes to make sure the water quality was as good as it could be.
A week or two after this the second fish became ill and died. At this point I purchased an API test kit to check the water parameters. Ammonia and nitrite were both at 0ppm, nitrate was somewhere in the region of 20ppm (it's difficult to tell exactly with API's kit due to the colours being so similar and there being big jumps in values between the colours).
Although 20ppm isn't massively high I read that fancy goldfish can be particularly sensitive to nitrate so I attempted to lower this by increasing my water changes. At the same time I also tested the tap water which seems to have somewhere around 10ppm nitrate in it. To counter this and keep them as low as possible I added some more plants to the aquarium and added API nitrazorb to my filter. This was about two weeks ago.
The other day a third fish became ill, I quarantined it in a separate tank to give it chance to rest (using 50% water from the aquarium, 50% fresh conditioned water). Within a couple of days it died.
At the time I quarantined the fish I checked the water parameters, I got 0 readings for ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate (thanks to the API Nitrazorb).
Originally I suspected sensitivity to nitrate was the problem but now I'm not sure and I'm worried the remaining two fish will die as well. They currently look perfectly healthy, but so did the others until a day or so before they died.
I'm currently doing one 25% water change a week and one/two 10% changes mid week on top of this.
Is there some kind of disease attacking my fish? Should I medicate the surviving two as a precaution?
The only other problem I can see is the water temperature is quite high, it is in a conservatory and with the current heat it can get as high as 80f/27c.
Any advice would be appreciated.
It starts with them appearing to be slightly bent/curved and having difficulty swimming. This quickly escalates, they become more bent over and lay at the bottom of the tank until they can no longer seem to move at all. Shortly after this they die.
This has happened to 3 out of 5 fish in my tank, across several weeks. The first one appeared to also have slightly cloudy eyes. The second had no additional symptoms that I noticed. The third had a cotton wool like substance on it's tail - this seemed to appear after the initial onset of the other symptoms.
The tank is 200L with an APS 2000EF+ filter providing 9w UV sterilisation, fitted with bioballs, active carbon, filter foams, and more recently an API Nitrazorb pouch.
The tank was set up a couple of months ago using Tetra Safe Start when the fish were added - 4 moors (2 black, 1 red/white, 1 panda) and 1 oranda.
During the first couple of weeks there was an outbreak of ick, which I treated with salt - 3 tablespoons per 20L built up over a few days. Within a week all symptoms disappeared.
A couple of weeks after this the first fish died. I stepped up my cleaning and water changes to make sure the water quality was as good as it could be.
A week or two after this the second fish became ill and died. At this point I purchased an API test kit to check the water parameters. Ammonia and nitrite were both at 0ppm, nitrate was somewhere in the region of 20ppm (it's difficult to tell exactly with API's kit due to the colours being so similar and there being big jumps in values between the colours).
Although 20ppm isn't massively high I read that fancy goldfish can be particularly sensitive to nitrate so I attempted to lower this by increasing my water changes. At the same time I also tested the tap water which seems to have somewhere around 10ppm nitrate in it. To counter this and keep them as low as possible I added some more plants to the aquarium and added API nitrazorb to my filter. This was about two weeks ago.
The other day a third fish became ill, I quarantined it in a separate tank to give it chance to rest (using 50% water from the aquarium, 50% fresh conditioned water). Within a couple of days it died.
At the time I quarantined the fish I checked the water parameters, I got 0 readings for ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate (thanks to the API Nitrazorb).
Originally I suspected sensitivity to nitrate was the problem but now I'm not sure and I'm worried the remaining two fish will die as well. They currently look perfectly healthy, but so did the others until a day or so before they died.
I'm currently doing one 25% water change a week and one/two 10% changes mid week on top of this.
Is there some kind of disease attacking my fish? Should I medicate the surviving two as a precaution?
The only other problem I can see is the water temperature is quite high, it is in a conservatory and with the current heat it can get as high as 80f/27c.
Any advice would be appreciated.
