Can Someone Please Advise My Dad

[Jo Booth]

Hello

I have not posted in this section as I have atropical tank so usually lurk there!

My dad has a large pond (im not sure exactly the litres but Im sure he mentioned 2.500 l or so).. He started off very badly ! He has seriously overfed the fish following IMHO very bad advice from a friend.

He has one fish with dropsy - seemingly quite advanced as well. I tested the water with him and whilst not at lethal levels, his nitrite was high (0.3). The ammonia levels were <0.1 but still had slight colouring indicating the levels were no 0. Nitrate was around 15 and pH was bang on 7.0

We have vacuumed the bottom of the pond to remove debris, trimmed all the plants and removed dead/dying leaves. A 50% water change was done and the poorly fish was removed to a tank (outside in the shed for such purposed).

This morning, he tested the water, nitrite was 0 as was ammonia. pH still 7.0 but another goldfish has pineconed.

Both fish are now in the tank with treatment and he has treated the pond as a whole.

Feeding has now been stopped.

There is a gentle waterfall in the pond and also good aeration (don't know what it is but it is like a foutain but just bubbles t the water surface).

I hope that he is no getting this under control but I don't think his fish will recover at this stage. I wonder what you guys would advise as a good treatment in your experience and if the worst comes to the worst, how to euthanise - they are not tiddlers they are two large goldfish (about 15cm long).

Many thanks in advance.

Jo

 

[chr15_8]

hi

you said your dad treated the ond already? i imagine the water temp is very low at the moment and the medicine could probably do more harm than good. you would be best of looking on the label and seeing if there's a minimum temperature if you can't see it look on the Internet for the product. if there is and the water is below the temperature then personally i would call the and ask whats best to do.

you done the right thing about moving the fish into a tank to try and heal the fish but you would need to add a heater and raise the temperature slowly to be able to treat the fish properly (should be about 16 degrees ideally) and it will need to have a good filter on there as keeping good water parameters is vital on ill fish

 

[black angel]

sadly what youre seeing is the end stage of a bacterial disease. once pineconing has started its impossible really to halt and reverse. If by some miracle you do get it back to relative normality the fish will never be able to return to the pond as temp has to be high to stop its return.

for me personally your best bet is to end its suffering.

 

[aquila]

sadly what youre seeing is the end stage of a bacterial disease. once pineconing has started its impossible really to halt and reverse.

I am inclined to agree, once a pond fish has pineconed it's in the advanced stages of the condition and it can be up to chance whether the fish recovers, although I've seen the odd one make it. What medication has been used?

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

As others have stated, dropsy is primarily a bacterial disease- but it can also come about from constipation in fish.

Fishes metabolisms are controlled by the temperature of the water that surrounds them, in a pond in winter the temperatures fall a great deal and as a consequence the fishes metabolisms also become slower.
When it comes to eating, these low temperatures and slow metabolisms in the fish make it more difficult for fish to digest food properly- food takes a longer time to digest. This can be bad, since if your father is still feeding the goldfish normal goldfish food, the food tends to sit in the goldfish stomach for a long time and can start to rot inside the fishes stomach, causing the fish to die an internal bacterial infection- this may be one of the reasons why the fish got dropsy.
Fish don't eat much during the winter, its quite fine to stop feeding them completely when the temperatures drop below 10 degrees warm, as the fish will have naturally built up body fat reserves to survive off during these cold times. If you do want to continue feeding them though, you should feed them only wheatgerm pellets, as wheatgerm is very easily digestible at cold temperatures and so is fine to feed the fish- either way though you should still feed them quite sparingly (a small amount once a day tops is fine) when the temperature falls to 10 degrees or colder. Above 10 degree's warm it is still fine to feed goldfish normal food.

Another factor why the goldfish got dropsy could be down to the water quality. If the pond is overstocked (particularly if the pond is not filtered), then ammonia, nitrite and nitrate levels will rise and physically stress/strain the fish. Dropsy is essentially kidney failure in fish, the pine coning scales come about because when the kidneys fail in fish, the osmotic process in the fish goes wrong and the fish starts to retain too much fluid in its body, so much so that eventually the scales pine cone out. When this happens the fish is pretty much beyond cure as the kidneys will be very damaged by this time and probably beyond repair, and euthanising the fish in a humane manner is often the best course of action.

Dropsy can be caused by constipation, bacterial internal infection, poor water quality or contaminants in the water (like chemicals like cleaning product chemicals etc). It is generally not a very infectious condition/disease, so separating sick fish isn't necessary to prevent it from spreading, however it is important to remove and euthanise fish whose symptoms are quite progressed, to help prevent them from dying in the pond/tank and spreading the disease to other fish (pretty much all fish will scavenge the dead bodies of other fish, and this is one of the most common ways diseases and parasites spread amongst other fish).

The pond could be overstocked in 2 ways- either the fish in the pond are too large for the pond and producing too much ammonia, or there are simply too many fish in the pond regardless of size. Ponds which have no filtration (note that things like fountains, bubble pumps and waterfalls etc do not count as filtration) then it will be a lot easier to overstock the pond- while in filtered ponds of decent size you can have about one goldfish per 100 gallons, in unfiltered ponds one goldfish per 200-250gallons is better.
Does your dads pond have any filtration and how many goldfish are in it? It is important to figure out how many gallons/liters are in the pond as specifically as possible, so that we can figure out whether the pond is overstocked at all. If the pond is overstocked, then reducing the amount of goldfish in it to appropriate levels will massively help out the quality of the water and make it much better for all fish in the pond to live in (and since water quality problems are often the no.1 root cause of illnesses in fish, maintaining good water quality will help prevent anymore fish from falling ill).

With the current dropsy infected goldfish, you should euthanise them in a humane manner- if anymore fish get dropsy, you should do the same to them, rather than moving them to an indoors tank. It is too cold at this time of year to move tank goldfish to outdoor ponds, the temperature change is too stressful for them. I suspect that the dropsy these fish are getting is down to the water quality of the pond and what the fish are being fed, so the best course of action is one that focuses on preventing anymore fish from getting dropsy by sorting out the maintenance of the fish and pond and possibly stocking levels of the pond as well .
When you performed the water change, did you add any water conditioner/dechlorinater to the fresh new water added to the pond?