Fancy Goldfish

[IT-FishGuy]

My wife has one fancy goldfish in a 20 gallon. (Slight upgrade from a 10) Lately the fish was gasping for air which I knew was a sign of problems with the water quality, so I checked it. Ammonia was kinda of high (1ppm) so I did a PWC. Apparently, it had been doing this for a while. Today I noticed the fish was flipping and doing headstands and floating. I was thinking swim bladder at first but checked the web and found it was the gasping for air that started it.

So we feed the fish peas, I checked the water which was fine (0 on all counts). I also dosed the tank with Melafix thinking that bacteria could also be an issue. This afternoon after floating in the morning the fish sank so I thought that was a good sign, it also passed floaters which was another good sign.

I know GF are dirty and I have kept Oscars and one GF a long time ago. I use to change their water out weekly and I am wondering if I will need to do the same here or more often? I'm also wondering if the tank is too small, the fish is currently 3.5 inches not counting the fins.

 

[Aquarium1]

20 gallons should be fine for a fancy goldfish. How often do you do pwcs? 0 nitrates is kind of strange, are you sure you're shaking the bottle up enough? The latter isn't such a big deal, just curious.

 

[IT-FishGuy]

Thought the same thing

Good to hear a 20 will do it. Yeah it was strange to not have nitrates of some kind in the tank, it does have a bit of brown algae in the tank. I can't remember when I did the 1st PWC. Maybe the fish has been "backed up" for a while? I'll go run another test just to make sure I didn't screw it up, but I followed the instructions to the letter.

Thanks for the feedback.

Yep tested correctly, no nitrates. Tanks been up for months