Help my goldfish :bawl:

[free_willy]

Hi there, my name is Stephanie and last October i bought an 18litre plastic blue tank and acquired 3 plain goldfish. Slowly i learned with many mistakes i was doing everything wrong, i didnt know looking after goldfish was as hard as any other pet, my family kept telling me, theres nothing to it. Anyway, the fish settled in well and even though i got an interpet pf mini filter the tank needed cleaned every week as the water turned green fast, after a couple of weeks in my excitement i bought a new fish, a shubunkin, then at Christmas as a gift from my mother she bought me a new fantail, i was worried as i knew there were too many in the tank but it was too late now, but the fish seemed to love her, they setteld in well and i was happy, then in new years eve i found my shubunkin dead, it was sudden and i cried for hours, as only having him a few months i had got attached and he alone fed from my fingers. My family consoled me, told me things like this happened all the time ao i never thought to look for a cause. For a long time my fish were fine, then one week i was doing a full clean and removing them from the tank, i was checking and email and let my boyfriend use the net to lift them out,i noticed one through a fit and put up a real fight, i jumped up to find out what was wrong and say he had a ragged fin, i thought my boyfriend had done it when lifting him out but there was no evidence of blood of bits of fin on the net so i deduced it was like that, i treated him with disease safe on his own and cleaned the tank, he was fine after and i thought the fin even started to grow back a bit, i figured maybe he had just got in a fight with one of the others. Then another fish was introduced as my new flatmate went mad over my fish and went and bought her own and one for me, well he was a shubunkin and i was hardly gonna leave him in the bag. he settled in fine and i kept an eye on them all, the pure golds stuck together and the little shubunkin and fantail were two peas in a pod. Weeks later another friend showed up with a goldfish half the size of my pinky, by the point i was exasperated and i knew there was too many in the tank, but there was nothing i could do. True enough 6 days later the tiny fishie was dead, i wasn't too upset as i had expected it, however 2 weeks later i found my shubunkin dead and tangled in the plastic plant, i deduced he had got caught in the plant and panicked. I was now down to the original 3 gold and my fantail, i was happy enough as i felt the tank was big enough. soon though i noticed a change in one of the fish, the one with the ragged fin, i dont know what but i knew something was off, sure enough two days later i woke up to find him dead. i was devastated, i couldnt believe what i was doing wrong, i wasnt over feeding, i cleaned the water and treated it, i had a filter and checked everyday for change in the fish. The following week i noticed my biggest and strongest fish was wobbling, my friend, another goldfish owner told me it was swimbladder disease and it needed air but was too week to get to the surface, i filled a bucket with a small amount of water and treated it, i added too peas to treat possible constipation and i put the little guy in, he still couldnt get steady enough to reach the surface so i helped him, pushing him enough up to get air, he was fine after that swimming around although he never did eat, i left him in the bucket overnight getting up regularly to check on him, he was fine, i believed he would return to full health, around lunchtime the next day he was wobbling again and darting around, i tried helping but he was having none of it, i watched him slowly die and take his last breath, i cried like i lost a close relative and i still cry when i think of my fish, i am attached to all animals, if i had the brains i would have been a vet! This brings me to now, and my two remaining fish a golden and a fantail. The gold one has been flashing and darting about, i thought it was a new ornament in the new tank had agitated and scared him so i removed it. he settled down but he is flashing all the time now, all his darting all around keeps knocking my fantail around, i think this has damaged her swimbladder as she has been wobbly all day and now has to be continually moving to stay anywhere other than the surface of the tank, shes just got so tired now she has spent the last two hours mostly floating at the surface but totally straight as if she was lying on the bottom of the tank. I'm not sure if something is wrong or not but i love my fish and an attachment like this must seem stupid to most people but if something happened to either one of them it would break my heart. I read somewhere flashing is a sign of parasites but there are so many and the treatments look so complicated, i didnt know what to do and i couldnt find someone i could contact. I know this has given my fish' whole life story but i want to know have i done something wrong and what can i do to relieve my poor fish of his symptoms. Please help, ive spent nights researching and coping up with nothing and lost sleep over worrying and watching my fish. Please i could do with any advice or help you could give.
Thank you

 

[Sssea]

You might get more responses if you make this a little easier to read, it's kind of one big blob of text.

Goldfish are really messy poop machines and need a lot of clean water. I know many will recommend at least 20 gallons for the first fish and 10 more gallons per additional fish. Their fin and health problems are probably a result of poor water quality because they are kept in such a small tank. Imagine if you were to live in a tiny telephone booth with all your waste accumulating, would you be healthy?

Give them plenty of partial water changes and hopefully you can get them a bigger tank, so they can have a healthier environment. You'll also need a testing kit to make sure the water quality is up to par for them.

I hope this is at least a starting point for advice, I know many others have much more information for you.

Good luck!

 

[free_willy]

thanks, this was originally a private message, i was told to cut and paste to a forum as the person did not know much about goldfish.

 

[Sssea]

thanks, this was originally a private message, i was told to cut and paste to a forum as the person did not know much about goldfish.

No worries. And I don't think being attached to your fish is silly, i think you'll find most people here are. My goldfish are like my little water puppies. I cried for days when my first goldfish died.

 

[andresdeo]

Ok then, the general rule is 20 gal for the first and then 10 gal for each additional goldie. You habe them in a 20 liter tank, so roughly 1 gal is 3 lit more or less. For only 1 fish you should have 60 lit, 3 times more than you currently have. 20 gal or 60 lit extra for the additional 2 goldies is 120 litres, 6 times less than you currently have. And its a bit more than 3 lit to a gal so the numbers are a bit more sad.

I know you have becomed really attached to the fish, Im the same way with mine, but you have to provide them with an adequate setup so they can live and grow in a healthy way.

Recommendations: either get a bigger than in the 29-40 range or you should be thinking of letting some of the fish go. Specialy since I think you still have other fish in there. Hope this helps, dont take any of it the wrong way, but in my opinion a lot of change must be done.

Get a water test kit for ammonia, nitrites, nitrates and pH (Api master kit is one widely recommended) and let us know some of the numbers you are handling and that can be a good judge of the situation.

Take care, hope to hear from you soon.