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Fake_widow

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My comet goldfish is aprox 5 years old. Lately she's ben having lapses of virtical floating. She floats virtically and on side then fixes herself and continues smimming normally. This has been going on for a week or two now. She seems well, normal apitite. etc. I have been treating her for a bactieral infection behind her eye for a few days now. A pusy pimple like substance comes out of a hole just above her eye. Could this infection be causing teh problem...if you could reply it would be much appreciated. Thank you :unsure:
 
You mention floating vertically... but also on its side. Is it floating horizontally on its side or vertically? If vertically, is it nose up or nose down? In either case, this is usually indicative of swim bladder issues that can be caused by several things... from bacterial problems to digestive issues to constipation.

What medicine are you using to treat your tank? Dosing the water or feeding medicated foods or ???

Is the fish by itself in a H-tank for treatment in the main tank?

Also read over the pinned topic http://www.fishforums.net/Looking-For-Help...sh-t172152.html and give us more information about your tank.
 
thanks for the reply goldlenny. She floats nose up virtically and sometimes loses control near the filter and falls to her side horizontal. Im medicating with "pimafix" and simply adding to the water. Im meding the entire main tank. I dont own another tank to medicate in. Ive fed her a few peas to help her digestive system. but to no avail at the moment....I realize swimbladder problems are hard to cure, but is there anything i can do to help at least....thanks again
 
Look at that link in my last post and give us more information. It would make it much easier to help.

Comets are not as prone to swimbladder issues as fancy goldfish so without knowing the other things going on in your tank, it's difficult to assess things. What size tank? Water parameters? Filtration? etc., etc... the more info the better.
 
thanks GoldLenny.
Tank Size - 160 L
PH - 7.2
Amonia - 0
nitrites - 0
Nitrates - 60

I have a fancy goldfish also along with 2 catfish and 4 black widow tetra.
I feed them flake goldfish food most days and every other day brine and occationally bloodworm.
I use a hanging aquaclear 200 with no carbon only sponge and clay. Ive been replacing about 30% of the tank water once a week lately to try to lower the nitrate level but its not getting any lower.
Last night b4 i went to sleep he was acting kind of odd and i had a bad feeling he would be bad in the morning. Ive just woke and he was swimming very badly. Constant twirls, upside down etc. I fed them a small amount of food and his infected eye ruptured and white puss has secreeted.(this has happened b4). Now he seems to be swimming fine. I think its only a matter of time b4 he finds it hard to swim again. Other than his swolen eye and his swimming , he has no other symptoms of illness.

I hope i have given you enough information. Thanks for your help goldlenny.
 
It's good that you are replacing 30% of your water (PWC) weekly but are you vacuuming your gravel really good with each PWC? Are you doing filter maintenance by cleaning the heavy detritus off of your filter media on a regular basis? (I do mine weekly or at least every two weeks). If you are not doing this, the decaying detritus in your gravel and filter media would cause you to have excess nitrates. It could also be coming from your tap/source water. Excess detritus in your gravel can also become a breeding ground for bad bacteria and we know how goldfish like to forage in the gravel. It could be sucking up lots of bad stuff while looking for food.

It's good to have a baseline of test results on your tap/source water and check it a few times a year. To do this, run your cold water for a minute to flush out any stagnant water that was in your home pipes. Then fill a gallon jug with water. Test it for ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, pH, KH and GH and record your results or post them here. Then add your dechlor product. Test for ammonia again. Post the test results. Then wait 48 hours and test for everything again and post your results. Quite often, you will see changes in the pH, KH and GH due to the buffers in the water losing their buffering capacity. This gives you a better idea of what will happen to the water once it's in your tank where even more biological processes take place.

Some people also find that they are getting high nitrates right out of their tap.

If you get any ammonia, it is probably from the chloramine that is used by many utility companies to disinfect drinking water. I have a risidual of 0.5ppm of ammonia in my tap water. When I do a PWC, that small amount is instantly consumed by the nitrifying bacteria in my filtration.

Now, on to your tank stocking.

You have a mix of goldfish and tropical fish which is not always a good thing. They have different needs for their water parameters. Long-bodied Goldfish like sub-tropical temperatures below 70F. Fancy Goldfish like sub-tropical temps in the low to mid 70'sF where tropicals need the high 70's to low 80's. If I remember correctly, yours is a long-bodied goldfish.

Your tank really isn't big enough for long bodied goldfish. They grow to 12"+ and are big-time swimmers so they need lots of swimming area. I know yours is still relatively small but keeping it in an undersized tank will cause it to get stunted which can also lead to the health problems you are seeing.

You need to find out what kind of catfish you have. There are thousands of different species. Do you remember anything about the name of them when you bought them? Did you buy them as algae eating catfish? Can you take a picture of them and post the pic here or provide a link to your photo so we can help figure out what you have.

http://fish.mongabay.com/species/Carassius_auratus.html - Goldfish Profile
http://fish.mongabay.com/species/Gymnocorymbus_ternetzi.html - Black Widow Tetra Profile

Water recommendations for the known species that you have:
Goldfish - pH 6-8 (7.0), 4-25 dH (10), 46-68°F (8-20°C)
BW Tetras - pH 5.8-8.2 (6.8 ), 4-28 dH (8 ), 72-82°F (22-28°C)

While the pH and dH (another way to read hardness) are similar enough, the temperature recommendations are drastically different. What temp are you keeping your tank at?

Keeping a fish too far outside of it's preferred water parameters will cause stress to the fish which then leads to a weakened immune system and potential health problems.

It would be best to treat the goldfish in a separate tank but if you don't have that option, then you should pick up some anti-bacterial food and put the goldfish on that for 7-10 days to cure the bacterial issues you are having. Since you mentioned the infected eye also, I would suspect the swim bladder issue is being caused by internal bacterial problems as well. I'm not familiar with what medicated foods may be available to you in AUS so go to your LFS or pet store and write down the names and ingredients of the available foods and post them here. A common one that can usually be found is Jungle's AntiBacterial food. It's certainly not the best but it would help a little. There are much better one's available online but I'm not sure if they are available down under.

I bet you didn't realize there was so much to know just to keep a few fish. ;)
 
WOW!! Thanks for all the info goldlenny.
With the filter i do clean it like once a week. It gets clogged pretty quickly. So i clean it as often as possible. i haven't cleaned the gravel in a long time, i have alot of rocks and decoration in my tank and its extremely hard to clean it as often as i would like. As for the tap water ill have to do a few tests and get back to you. Ive been meaning to do that since started having hi levels. So yeah ill get back to you about that.

My tank is at approx. 24.5-26 alot of the time. I use a tetra heater and its been doing a really good job. I was talked into making my tank a tropical by my LFS and was told that most gold fish can withstand rather warm temperatures, and the warmth will speed up their metabolism. ??!?! I haven't had any problems until now really.

The catfish i have are Cory's. They just eat all the algae off the bottom of the tank. They are apparently scaleless fish. I'm not exactly sure which Cory they are. They are purple in places and pinkish.

Ill find out about the medication food asap. But like i said ill have to get back to you about the nitrate problem. I'm contemplating doing a full tank clean in the next couple of days now....:) Daunting but is obviously needed. Thank you for all the information . Ill post again asap.. THANKS GOLD LENNY!!! :D
 
I'm not sure what you mean by a "full tank clean" but DO NOT over clean you tank. This could kill off a large portion of your good nitrifying bacteria and cause your tank to have to go through the nitrogen cycle all over again.

As far as your substrate, use a siphon gravel vacuum to suck up the detritus from the gravel/substrate. Do all of the open areas first, then move the decorations to the cleaned areas and do under where the decorations were. There will usually be loads of detritus under decorations, which is a breeding ground for bad bacteria. I vacuum all of my substrate with every PWC.

Here is more info on Cory's. http://fish.mongabay.com/corydoradinae.htm but there are many different species of Corydoras. They generally like the same kind of water parameters which are: 6-7.8 pH (7.0); 2-20 dH (10); 75-82 F (24-28 C)

It's true that the warmer waters will speed up the metabolism of your goldfish but keeping them at an above normal temp for long term can cause stress to the fish which will then lead to a weakened immune system and make the fish more susceptible to disease or parasites.

Since your tank is on the small side for long-bodied goldfish and you are leaning towards tropical fish, it might be best to look for someone nearby with a pond where you could rehome the goldfish and then you could finish stocking your tank with tropicals. If you do this, you will still be able to visit your goldfish and you'll be surprise how fast he'll start growing in a pond.
 

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