Sick listless goldfish with red spot- HELP

[Nat_pizza]

Hi everyone. My goldie Pudge is sick and we don't know what to do. He's in a 10 gal tank that's been established over 6 months.
His water reads:
Nitrate: 40ppm
Nitrite: 0
Hardness: very hard 300
Chlorine: 0
Alkalinity: 180-300
pH 7.8-8.4 (couldn't tell)

He has a red spot on his "temple" at the top of his right gill. He has been listless all day but not sleeping. He has been clinching his top fin somewhat today, but he gets more active when I go near him. He also for the past couple days has been gasping for air. He's been foraging at the rocks the past couple days but he's been just floating about today. I did a 30% water change yesterday and did a similar one the night before and also vacuumed his rocks. He's been like this for a week now and we don't know what else to do. We've cut his feeding now to once every 24-30 hours and are doing 10 hours of light (due to some algae growth). Does anyone have any ideas?

[Autumnsky]

Hi, are you using test strips? They aren't always reliable.


Are you familiar with the nitrification cycle? Check out our site article link is in my signature and it will give you some good solid information.

A 10G tank isn't really large enough.
- this about why the fish should have a bigger tank.
http://www.aquariumadvice.com/forums...ve-265871.html

When was the last partial water change (pwc)?

Do you have a filter? Did you recently change the filter pad in the filter?

I would do a 30% pwc and then another 30% pwc. Easier for fish to get used to new cleaner water. Unless you have done a good sized pwc in the last few days you can do an equal amount then. But should check water with a liquid test kit.

I don't know how to read the ammonia checker, but it could be ammonia poisoning.

[AliSab]

I would highly suggest using a test kit for ammonia reading instead of the alert tags. I had the exact same tags in my tank and they failed spectacularly. My tank ammonia had crept up to 2ppm, unbeknownst to me had I not used a test kit, and the tag still showed that it was safe. A quick Google search showed that they are prone to failure. I threw mine out.