I have a goldfish for 26 months now, and its alone in the aquarium that takes around 10 litters of water, we feed him with proper food for goldfishes and no plants with the aquarium just some stones, the water is changed in a regular basis and when we do it we put some product to balance the water, this week I've noticed that a purple spot appeared on his head, and im quite worried about it, I've been googling to try to find what it is, Im from portugal and here we don't have vets that know about fishes, at least where I live. He is eating well, and behaving in a normal way, no other spots on him, and the he seems fine except for that that I dont know if will evolve in the next times. I will upload some pictures and If anyone knows what this is I will appreciate the help. I never had a fish before and I actually became quite attached to it, he comes when i call him and he learned how to make noises lately, and I really do not want to happen something.
My goldfish have a purple spot
- Thread starter Miuccia
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A goldfish shouldnt be kept in a 10 litre tank. 80 litres should be the minimum for a fancy goldfish. 120 litres would be better. Being kept in too small an environment will stunt a fishes body growth, their internal organs outgrow their bodies and this causes many health issues, for example what you are seeing now. Honestly a 26 month goldfish in 10 litres of water has lived longer than you would normally expect.
To give you an idea of how stunted your fish is at 2 years a goldfish should be pretty much fully grown. That would be about 8 to 10 inches in length (excluding tail). Ive got a 10 litre tank somewhere and i would struggle to cram a full grown goldfish in there, it certainly couldn't swim around.
If you can get your fish in a bigger tank it will at least improve its quality of life while it still lives. If not i would up the water changes. Goldfish are messy fish, they produce a lot of waste, and in such a small tank i doubt that this is sufficiently being filtered out. Does your tank have a filter? What is your normal water change schedule? How much/ how often? I dont suppose you have a water testing kit? If not can you take a sample of water to a pet store and ask them to test for you? Get pH, ammonia, nitrite and nitrate and ask for actual numbers rather than having them good or bad.
To give you an idea of how stunted your fish is at 2 years a goldfish should be pretty much fully grown. That would be about 8 to 10 inches in length (excluding tail). Ive got a 10 litre tank somewhere and i would struggle to cram a full grown goldfish in there, it certainly couldn't swim around.
If you can get your fish in a bigger tank it will at least improve its quality of life while it still lives. If not i would up the water changes. Goldfish are messy fish, they produce a lot of waste, and in such a small tank i doubt that this is sufficiently being filtered out. Does your tank have a filter? What is your normal water change schedule? How much/ how often? I dont suppose you have a water testing kit? If not can you take a sample of water to a pet store and ask them to test for you? Get pH, ammonia, nitrite and nitrate and ask for actual numbers rather than having them good or bad.
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Thank you so much for your reply, I had no idea that the tank had to be that big as I got him in small standard aquarium and when i went to the pet store they advice me to buy this one, I couldn't find a water testing kit but I will order one online and check bigger aquariums, I am bit limited in the space to have it tho, we change the water around 2 weeks, and we keep a bit of the old one and change all the rest, its the only time I see him annoyed, as he doesn't like much when we do it, I think is because the temperature of the water goes lower than it was, even if we keep the water for sometime in bottles to keep it at ambiance temperature before we change it, I've noticed too that the new food i got, special for goldfishes, the other one before it was for cold water fishes, makes more of a mess than the previous, the tank dont have the filter in use because when we started to use it, the noise caused him stress and he was always swimming very quickly around the tank, so we decided to turn it off, we have PH that I know, but not sure about the rest I will check it when I get home. Finally thank you so so much for your help.
A goldfish in a 10 litre tank with no filter. I would be changing water daily. Even that probably doesn't keep up with amount of waste produced.
The purple mark looks like a haemorrhage to me. I wouldnt expect a fish to recover from that. As long as your fish is active and eating just try and give it the best quality of life you can.
The purple mark looks like a haemorrhage to me. I wouldnt expect a fish to recover from that. As long as your fish is active and eating just try and give it the best quality of life you can.
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