Red Spots On Goldfsh

Can anyone help me with my fish? There's only one affected, and he's the largest one. Just noticed the bigger red spot this morning, noticed two small red spots tonight. See specifics below.

Tank size: 33 gallons
pH: 7.2
ammonia: 0
nitrite: 0
nitrate: 10
kH: not known
gH: not known
tank temp: 68 - 70

Fish Symptoms (include full description including lesion, color, location, fish behavior): Red round spot about 1/8 inch at the base of ... the back fins, also 2 small spots on belly area near back fins

Volume and Frequency of water changes: New aquarium to me (got 1 week ago -- so nearly 100% water change about a week ago), but is and has been cycled / in use for 2+ years with former owner

Chemical Additives or Media in your tank: Biomatrix / Biomax; filter sponge in filters; 2 "old" bags of carbon (kept to try seeding new media); 1 new bag of carbon; filtered by external filter Fluval 304 (some mature media) plus Aqua Clear 50 (new media)

Tank inhabitants: Fantail Goldfish, 1 3-inch, 1 2-inch, 2 1-inch (formerly had approx. 24" of fish -- 11 fish -- when I got it)

Recent additions to your tank (living or decoration): took out gravel and put in small amount of sand to start changeover to sand -- 12/11

Exposure to chemicals: none known

Digital photo (include if possible): picture taken today

Picture taken yesterday, about 30 hours previous to above picture and before moving out a couple of fish and taking the gravel out (other fish is an approx. 1" long fantail)

PLEASE, can anyone help? The spots are growing in size and more reddish areas appearing.

tnfishlady said:

PLEASE, can anyone help? The spots are growing in size and more reddish areas appearing.

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Try a combo of Melafix and Primafix. Works like a charm, and won't affect your filter.

Also, do a large water change.

Looks to me like it could be a bacterial infection. I'm not 100% but it doesn't look like anything else I can think of

I believe it is septicemia (sp?). Yesterday, I started treatment with Furo-something? -- lists septicemia as one thing it treats. Both of the larger fantails are affected and more red spots had appeared. I had done 50% daily water changes since I first saw the spots, but it didn't make any difference and perhaps made it worse.

The aquarium had quite a bit of mucky water when the gravel was stirred up when I got it. I cleaned the gravel the best I could and like I listed above they probably had nearly 100% water change when it was set back up. The canister filter also had a lot of guck it in. I'm not sure if was all this and with the stress of moving them it brought this on or perhaps with the gravel change to sand (small amount of debris floating around until the filters got it).

I just hope this works and it doesn't kill off all the good bacteria in the filter.

Ammonia and nitrite are still at zero / not detectable -- using API test kits.