My Poorly Ranchu

[angel.star]

Hi there,

I hope you can help. I have a small white ranchu who has suffered with chronic swimbladder for a couple of months now. At least that's what I think it is! She spends her days now on her back on the bottom of the tank near the front. Occassionally she will have a burst of energy and swim about for a bit, but not for long. I have other fish in there and they don't bother her at all, there's no nipping or nudging, they just leave her there. She eats quite happily with the other fish when I feed them at night. I'll list what I've done for her so far...

* Installed a heater so the water is at 25C (she responded well to this at first)
* Put aquarium salt in the water each time I do a water change
* Treated the water for two weeks with Interpet Swimbladder Treatment
* Changed their diet, so their staple diet is TetraFin Gold Japan, with occasional bloodworms, and other frozen live food. She reacts the same no matter what she eats
* Do a 10% water change every week, treating the water with AquaSafe and EasyBalance each time

The one thing I haven't tried is starving her for a few days, and that's because there are six other fish in the tank who go bonkers at feeding time!

Here's my tank info...

Size of aquarium - 60 litres
Types of fish - 2 ranchus, 3 fantails, 1 shubunkin, 1 sucker fish. The biggest fish is the fantail at around 5cm long
Filtration used and how do you clean it and how often - Tetratec EasyCrystal, cleaned about once a month, soaked in aquarium water
How much in the way of water changes and how often -- 30% water changes every month or so if needed, 10% every week
Do you dechlorinate - No as far as I know, but I use AquaSafe if that's what you mean
Symptoms of sick fish ie, spots, behaviour, etc - Sinking to the bottom, laying upside down all day, slow breathing
How long has the fish been sick and which medications are your currently using or recently used - See above
Test results for ammonia, nitrite, nitrate and ph both from the tap and tank - Water tested recently and all is fine - sorry no results!

If you need a picture of her I'm sure I can do that if it would help. I hate to see her like this but I won't be able to euthanase her, because I always believe that if she's living and breathing and swimming happily in the evenings, there must be something I can do. I wondered if it would be worthwhile me moving her from the 60 litre tank into a smaller one, albeit without the filter and air stone etc, as I heard the depth of the water can make it harder to recover?

Hope you can help, sorry for the essay!

Many thanks.

 

[denis coghlan]

Water tested recently and all is fine

I dont believe that you're water is fine.


I think your main problem is water quality! 2 ranchus, 3 fantails, 1 shubunkin, 1 sucker fish is far to much bio-load for a 60 lt to tank handle, especially if you are only doing 10% water changes weekly. With that number of fish you should be looking at 30-40% weekley minimum.

IMO your tank is too small to house all these fish, although the largest is only 5cm at the moment, you have seven potentially large fish (with a extreamly large bio-loads) and be warned that "sucker fish" ahhhhhhh is going to be largest of all. Bring them back or get a tank that is three times the size of your existing tank.

Regards

 

[GoldLenny]

I think you need a MUCH larger tank... more than three times larger. With 6 goldfish, you should probably have 400 liters PLUS. If the "sucker fish" is a common pleco, it needs to be in a 300 liter tank so for all 7 fish, you would probably need 600 liters PLUS.

From all I've read about Easy Balance, I don't like it. The MSDS sheet, which I was only able to find on WalMart.com MSDS site, shows VERY bad stuff is in Easy Balance. Also, it tells people they don't have to do partial water changes for up to 6 months which is outright BAD information. It leaves little white chemical pellets in the gravel which the goldfish could easily suck up and swallow when they forage through the gravel looking for food.

If you decide to get a MUCH larger tank, there is a lot you can do to make your tank better for your fish but if you try to keep them in the current tank, you will have nothing but health problems with all of your fish.

 

[angel.star]

Thanks for your suggestions. Unfortunately I only bought that many fish because my local aquarium said it would be fine with at least eight in there, so I was only following advice. Every fish in the tank except the white ranchu are absolutely fine, none of them have ever suffered any ailments, only one or two bouts of overnight swimbladder with the other ranchu a while ago. It's just this one fish. I'd have thought if there was something wrong with the water, indeed if there were too many fish as you say, surely all of the fish would be showing symptoms? I'm sure I'm wrong but there we go. Sorry for not knowing the name of my 'sucker fish', I didn't want to offend anyone, I just didn't want to mislead you by giving him the wrong name! From research he appears to be a Hillstream Loach / butterfly pleco / balitorid (not sure which name is preferred around here!)

Thanks for your help.

 

[GoldLenny]

As far as your fish with swim bladder issues... round-bodied goldfish have a genetic pre-disposition to have swim bladder issues. Some will never recover from it. During necropsies, many round-bodied goldfish are found to have deformities that have been caused by the inbreeding that takes place to come up with the various genetic mutations that are sold as fancy goldfish. Your ranchu could just have a genetic defect and may always have problems.

As you will soon learn, many local stores do not know very much about long-term fish keeping. They get them in as babies, sell them and get some more in to sell to the people whose fish died from the bad advice they got from the local store. Not all stores are like this but I would bet 90% are.

Here is this sites Goldfish care thread with recommended tank sizes. http/www.fishforums.net/Gold-fish-in-tanks-t43980.html

Personally, I think a 55G/200L 4' long tank is the minimum sized tank someone should get for 2-3 fancy goldfish for the first couple of years. They may need even a larger tank after that. Goldfish get HUGE!!!

Here is a profile on the Butterfly Hillstream Loach just to make sure this is what you have. http/www.loaches.com/species-index/beauf...a-kweichowensis It's only supposed to get to around 3" so that's good... at least it's not one of the common pleco's that grow to 18"++... but you still need to work on a MUCH LARGER tank for you goldfish if you plan on keeping them.

If you can't get the right sized tank, you and your fish would be better off rehoming them and then you could stock your tank with smaller coldwater fish or smaller tropical fish. If you go with cold water fish, at least the loach would be able to stay.