Newbie with very sick fancy goldfish

[evilv]

Hi,

I just bought a small aquarium and filter (6 gallons) and it's been running about two months with partial water changes and four fancy goldfish. About three weeks ago, I got 3 more and added them. One died pretty quickly and now another of the new ones has gone 'off'. I hope to save it with some advice. Here are the symptoms:

Dorsal fin down, tail fins turned down and it began to hang around the bottom of the tank. All the other fish are fine and vigorous. I have removed it and put it in another small tank with filter and entirely fresh water. It has been lieing on the bottom for 36 hours now and will occasionally struggle about in an ungainly way if disturbed by torchlight. It looks mighty sick to me, but it has no external abnormalities.

Any advice please?

 

[evilv]

Further info on newbie problem

Forgot to say, the gills are red like it has an inflamation.. Sorry to add that in a new post

 

[Grant R]

Hi evilv

Well, seven goldfish for a six gallon tank is quite a lot. Even with regular water changes, i'm imagining it must be quite difficult to keep down Ammonia & Nitrite levels ?
Coldwater fish are generally more messy than tropical too and will also raise Ammonia levels quicker. Unfortunately, the smaller the tank, the more challenging it is to control these water parameters.

When you say you transferred the fish to a seperate tank with ' entirely fresh water ' , had this tank been allowed to cycle ?

Sorry to hear about your loss.

Grant

 

[evilv]

Hi Grant,

Thanks for the advice. A minor correction to my orgiginal posting... The tank is actually 40 litres which is if my maths is right, nearer to nine gallons. The fish are small too at about 3 cm or an inch and a half long, so with six fish now, I have a total of about 9 inches of fish. Still, what you say about over cowding is probably right. The other fish are fine though, swimming with vigour and all fins 'up'.

Re the cycling of the 'hospital' tank. No... it wasn't cycled properly. It was an emergency and I wanted the sick criter out ... quick so the others didn't get whatver it was.

The sick fish is still alive. Now it swims up and wiggles about losing it's orientation and ends up head down in the water. After about ten seconds of this, it relaxes and goes down to the bottom of the new tank with its 'clean' water. (It will have a bit of chlorine since its tap water.

Any more ideas?

 

[Grant R]

Hello,

The fact the tank ( hospital tank ) hasn't cycled will not really help your sick fish, but I doubt it'll affect it too much either. Do you have any water conditioner, EG Stress Coat ? These are basically products get rid of the stuff to make the water safe for humans, but unsafe for fish.

If you are unsure on tank size, have a look at the calculators feature on this site - found on the top menu bar.
Take a visit to your LFS and pick up some general disease killer ( finrot, fungus, that sort of stuff ) and add it to your hospital tank according to the dosage. I use one called ' eSHa 2000 ' which is pretty good.

Hope it all works out.

Grant

 

[evilv]

Dead fish

Grant,

Thanks for the help. It's appreciated but unfortunately - not by the fish which died....

Never mind. I've learned something from it. Strangely, if it was caused by the water quality, the other fish in the tank are fine, all fins up and perky. I think these small criters are a bit more sensitive than the common old goldfish, of which I have a couple in my pond outside. They don't get any trouble, but of course they have about 300 gallons to swim and **** in.

Re the dead fish, I did treat the tap water in the hospital tank, but there was something wierd going on. Anyway all the others are fine.

I went down to my fish supplier and they offered to test the water for me, so I'll take some down tomorrow.

Thanks again for the advice.

CASE CLOSED

Tony