Goldfish Stressed

[RandomWiktor]

Ok, I've noticed for the past 2 days that my goldfish were rather distressed; both were staying near the top of the tank gulping air, or sitting on the bottom looking clamped. I did a significant water change because the tank temp was too elevated anyways, and then did a water test to make sure it wasn't an issue with our water itself.
I got the following readings:
Nitrate: Below 40ppm
Nitrite: Somewhere between 0 and .5
Hardness: I don't really get what the numbers mean, but it was the exact color of the ideal range, which is listed on the box as 50-150ppm
Alkalinity: Not even a color on the chart; the highest was a blue-green, and this is pure blue!
pH: 8.4, which is quite basic!
Other Info to help with this:
- 2 common goldfish, 1 year since purchase, 4-5 inches long
- 30 gallon aquarium with power filter and airstone
- Average temp around 75, but recent summer weather forcing it up to 80-82.
- Not cycled (yeah, yeah, bad, I know) but 90% water change every saturday.
- No previous history of health conditions, tested regularly for ammonia and has never been above 0, first time testing for other values.

Could this be what is harming my goldfish? I also noticed some fin streaking on the one fairing worse, so I'm treating it like septicemia with Maracyn-2. Salt (the quantity indicated for goldfish, not tropical fish), stress guard, and of course dechlorianor were added during the water change.

edit: Since the water change they have perked up considerably, but are still acting a little off.

 

[WILDER]

You have a nitrite reading there wan't getting down to 0,clamped fins are a sign of stress, just to make sure have they been flicking and rubbing on objects, no pale or red inflamed gills.

 

[RandomWiktor]

No flicking, no inflamed gills, but the one with the streaks in his fins is looking pale, and since they're both acting bad, I'm treating it as septicemia since the one seems to have it or some other kind of bacterial infection.

I really didn't understand the first part of what you wrote, could you reword it or use punctuation or otherwise make it more clear? Are you saying the Nitrite was too high, because the booklet said it was within safe and normal limits?

 

[black angel]

How do you clean the filter? just a quick squeeze through in old tank water is it? does it get really dirty or is it quite clean after a week.
do you have extra air going into the tank as a lack of air can cause fish to stress out particularly in hot weather.
when doing water changes try not to do more than 50% at any one time as this can stress out the fish as well, and always add temperature matched water. doing such a huge water change once a week is not a good idea, try doing 40% twice a week.
red streaking in the fins is usually a sign of ammonia or nitrite problems and the lethargy of the fish could mean you had a higher spike in either ammonia or nitrites.
you can use aquarium salt to help them with this until your tank has cycled properly. use 1 level teaspoon per gallon and then again 12 hours later to get to 2% and keep it like this for a couple of weeks. when you do a water change re add the salt for the amount of water you have taken out.
fish looking pale is not a good sign and if you can try and see what colour the inside of the gill is then that would help. for a healthy fish it should be cherry red.