Fish Sitting - problems

[Cohenjl13]

So I’m fish sitting my friends Goldfish who got them at a carnival two years or so with their kids and the poor things have been living in the same fish bowl with horrible water quality for lord knows how long. One looks like it has internal bleeding around it’s belly and fin (nitrate poisoning?) and other looks fine. I’m in the process of cleaning them up and giving meds to try and help but any suggestions on something I can do to return the fish with? Maybe toss an Anubis in the bowl with them or a price of wood from my main tank to help add some B.B.?

I’m not one to say hey your killing your fish and you need to do xyz but this makes me sad and thought I could help a little by adding a plant or something

 

[libertybelle]

anubius would grow too slow to make a significant impact on nitrogenous compounds. I mean I think you probably already know that a goldfish in a bowl can't be fixed by a plant. If you are going to put some kind of plant in the bowl something fast growing would have the most effect on nitrogenous waste but a goldfish would probably just eat a lot of the standards.

Maybe give them a little bottle of prime and suggest a drop every day to help detoxify ammonia. Not ideal but better than nothing?

Could be that they don't realize how bad the situation is though? Obviously you're not likely to make much headway scolding them but perhaps a comment that the fish would probably be healthier (or go a different route and say more active/fun) in more space might not go over as badly as you thought? When I was younger I had a standard 2-3 fancy goldfish in a five gallon and neither me or my parents had any idea that we weren't giving them a great home.

Maybe you won't convince them to set up a huge tank but at least something a little bigger with a real filter would be better than nothing.

 

[libertybelle]

I'm sure you know this but do be careful with the cleaning. Bad as those conditions are, too rapid of changes might do more harm than good by forcing the fish to endure a rapid bad to good parameters change (then likely another good to bad parameters change when the owners take over again)

 

[Cohenjl13]

Yea I did I put them in about 2 cups of old water and dripped in new over over a good hour or so. Put them back in the bowl with clean water, a price of drift wood with some clippings tied to it and a tiny bit of fert shoved into the wood. Hopefully that will help with the poor guys

 

[Toad]

This sounds terrible, but you could always take them and say they died. They're going to die anyways, and then you can tell them why they died, and you'd love to help them set up a tank properly if they want to get more fish (which if they weren't willing to bother taking care of the first place they will probably be relieved to not have to deal with it at all). Most non serious fish people win the goldfish and once they die they don't bother anymore because it's a hassle. Sad to say but true