Repeated Sickness In Freshwater Tank

[glenndallan]

Hello,
Apologies for the length of the post but I'm at my wits end about a problem in my tank.
I have a 3'x1'x1' freshwater setup and have been stocking it with fish since February. I kept both freshwater and tropical fish years ago so didn't want to overstock the tank at first. In fact over the 8 months I've had the set-up, I've had no more than three largeish fish (3" approx.) in the tank at any one time and definitely didn't introduce them all at once.
I treated any water added to the tank and the nitrite levels are very low. The pH is slightly lower than ideal but it doesn't seem horrendously low and I'm currently raising it slowly. I have an undergravel filter with a powerhead.
The fish seem fine at first, but after a couple of months the scales start to lift and the fish dies within a week. The first (an oranda) would swallow bubbles at the surface after eating and seemed to develop swimbladder problems. From this I adapted to feeding only every second day, on an alternating diet of frozen bloodworm and a handful of finely chopped cooked garden peas. This certainly stopped the remaining fish from floating stranded at the top of the tank, but over the intervening months I've lost another Oranda, and currently have a third with the scales raising ever greater each day. They tend to eat right up till the end and showed no other synptoms, until the third Oranda started to develop small puffy white sacs around the eyes. These tend to raise and then go down again, and look a bit like polo mints around the eyes. The actual eye isn't protruding. This may be a red herring but it's the only other thing I've noticed on the five fish that have had these symptoms.
I would believe that this was a problem with Orandas and the set-up in my tank, but I've also had two small Black Moors succumb to the same symptoms. Can anyone help with what is causing the raising of the scales and the fish deaths at regular intervals of a couple of months?
Thanks in advance.

 

[OohFeeshy]

The raising of the scales, does it make the fish look a bit like a pinecone? If so, its dropsy, an incurable disease that no one really seems to know much about Have you tried buying from a different shop? Also, what exactly is your pH? Messing around with it can often cause more harm than good.

 

[black angel]

Need to get the volume of water, which could be around 19 gallons.
If it is, then this is barely room for two fancy goldfish. UG filtration is im afraid inadequate for goldfish of any kind and i suggest you get either an internal or external filter to help. You need a turnover 10 times the volume of your tank minimum.
we need the values for ammonia, nitrite, nitrate and ph. The nitrite should be 0, if its not then you need to do more water changes.
Goldies can take a wide variety in ph but as long as its stable then dont go messing with it as this causes problems itself.
Do you gravel vac when water changing? How much water do you change and how often?
With the tank being over crowded and underfiltered its easy for bacterial diseases to take hold. Pineconing is the end result of an internal disease called dropsy and its really hard to cure and not many people want to spend the time and money trying to save fish from this disease as its usually too far advanced to cure.
The rings around the eye is another bacterial disease.

The best you can do is lots of water changing with gravel vacs and do 40% each day for the next week and then every two days.
Check all your water stats and if you dont have tests then your local fish store should be able to test a sample of the water.
I'm afraid treating dropsy is really slim and would require a heater, bacterial meds and epsom salt. It may be kinder to put the afflicted fish to sleep. For the one with the swollen eyes you can in america get a med called Gentamycin.
Are you uk or u.s?

 

[glenndallan]

Thanks for the replies. I'm in the UK for reference.
Yeah, a 3 foot tank will be around 19 gallons if my maths serves me right. Is this really not enough for fancy goldfish? The maximum I've had in there is three 3" bodied fish and they look to have lots of space, certainly far more than any i've seen in fish shops.
Thanks for the tip about filtration, I was sadly swayed away from a filter such as a Fluval by a friend of mine, who claimed a powerhead would be better.
Nitrite and ammonia levels are zero, I'm afraid I don't have a nitrate reading. ph was 6.0 last week, which i've slowly raised to 6.6 as I thought this was surprisingly low. Before then I never really touched it, and had the same sort of problems.
I do a 20% water change every three weeks, by using a vac on the gravel.
I'm aware the dropsy is terminal, but was just concerned that my problems keep reccurring, especially with Orandas. The second fish I bought was a Ryukin and that has lived happily in the tank without any problems.
Again, thanks for the help, any more advice would be most welcome. It's distressing to see my fish dying so often. I've treated with an anti-bacterial agent, mainly to ward anything off the other two fish.

 

[black angel]

The ph is low and you would need to find out the kh to see if thats low as well.
Goldies prefer harder water and you may have soft water.
Doing a 20% water change every three weeks is probably the cause of your problems.
These fish need a lot of water as they are huge waste producers and you should be doing 40% water changes twice a week at least. If you dont, then all you are doing is allowing the bad bacteria to build up which will quickly attack a fishes immune system allowing lots of diseases to take hold.
For the coming fortnight, do 30% every couple of days to keep the water in check. You should also get the fluval 3+ if you can, to help filtration.
Fancy type fish need at least 10 gallons each and the slimmer faster fish at least 20 gallons for medium sized fish.

 

[J_acon]

I am amazed at how many LFS recommend you to buy a UG filter. When i was tank shopping 4/5 offered me tanks with the UG filter included even though they had stacks full of external filters.

 

[bribones]

undergravel filters normaly work well with a powerhead,its all ive ever used in my tanks with a small filter to help polish the water off(yeh i know you lot dont like em)they are often the cheapest option for some people,how they perform is often down to how many fish ,the size of the gravel (too small a gravel and the waste wont pass through) and feeding habits ,more often than not people overfeed and cleaning habits ,with a undergravel i used to clean the tank totaly every 4 months(4ft x 2 x 18wide)but used to regularly get a small vac into the gravel ,the tanks always borderd on max stock or slightly overstocked and i never had any problems,whilst the filtration may be the cause id be tempeted to look elsewhere first before laying the blame firmly in that area ,are all the fish from the same store ,have you added plants or stones from a source that may be to blame

external filters whilst ok are often not an option and even some of the larger fluval types just wont fit in a tank thats 12" deep

the only tip i can really add about undergravel filters is to have both uplifts working both left and right to get them working to the max