wordhappy

Will do! )

Hi everyone, the discussion is very interesting and educational (and amusing) Just thought I'd update to let you all know the fishies are eating again without much spitting. The peas seemed to do the trick (no stringy poo any more). Dorsal fins are erect, fish are active and eating well. :happy2: Thank you!

Ah, well it is trailing. If I feed them more of them should it help to fix this? Then maybe give them a couple of feeds a week of peas to help maintain things? Your advice is appreciated as I'm completely new to this idea of feeding fish things other than goldfish flakes.

Green stringy poos... :gigl:

Hi folks, After initially rejecting the peas, they decided they were pretty great actually... after which I gave them some of their flake food, which they got into with great enthusiasm. Weird. I tried to get a photo of the white spot, but it didn't come out very well... I had to laugh (while saying "grrr") because as soon as the camera came out the crazy swimming and no staying still started. :facepalm: Not sure I'll be able to get a good pic after all.

Thanks everyone, I'm taking it all in... room temp varies a bit from 13-25 degrees as the weather has been variable lately. I try to do the water changes on warmer days to keep the temperature a bit more even. Fish are swimming well; all three are upright and swimming well at all levels within the tank so I'm not thinking swim bladder issues... I'll try to get a pic of the white spot tomorrow. And maybe the scale too. <

@livingart - why the lol? I have heard the presoaking thing a lot... just never had to actually do it. May have tried once early on then found out they just wait for it to sink. <

Thanks guys... could be the age of the food as it will be over three months. When they are this small it is hard to buy food in containers small enough to use within three months! A free tank, eh? That would be sweet and a great boon from the Universe. In the meantime I am looking after the little dudes as best I can and plan to buy a 250L tank next year (if the Universe doesn't bless me with one this year, hehe). I don't presoak my flake food but that is because my fish have learned to wait for it to hit the filter downstream and then they have a great old time following it all over the tank and vacuuming it up off the bottom! So I guess my first step is to buy some new food. I'm also going to give them a few peas tonight and see how they like that. <

Hi everyone, I'm relatively new to fishkeeping (had my tank about eight months or so) and have had a few setup issues in that time. Currently my goldfish are looking healthy, nice happy dorsal fins, active, all looking good except for what appears to be a single missing scale low on the left flank of one goldfish, and what appears to be a tiny glob of white cream on the anal fins of another. They have been getting on just fine with no major problems for some time now... but for the last week they have been spitting out any food they are offered. The same brand of flake food they have been eating for ages is not good enough anymore. They eventually eat it (they must do because it goes and I do eventually see them eating without spitting) - they're enthusiastic about meal times as usual but a couple of seconds after taking in a flake they will spit it back out... Of course I am aware that my main problem is the tank size (three very small - 2-3 inch - goldfish in a 38L tank) - when I started out, I was under the impression it was a very good tank size for up to about five goldfish... since learned that was wrong, but can't afford a new tank so I am doing the best I can with filtration, water changes, and generally keeping a good eye on things. Anyone got any ideas as to what might be the problem here? Thanks in advance! :spop:

Hi Luke*, sorry for the late reply but things have been going great since the Prazi. I've got a new problem now and will be posting a new post about that!

Thanks, @the-obstacle. I have reduced the amount I put in. 8) And by way of a general update, my two are looking much more alert and active, and very very enthusiastic at meal time! Dorsal fins are up and scales are looking better and better. I finished the course of Praziquantel (Droncit tabs; dosage in previous post) and then did a course of Pimafix. Fish have never looked better. I am even considering reintroducing gravel into the tank... maybe even at a later date a plant or two! :happy2: @aquariumbeginner32 - how are you going with yours? Feeling any better?

Does that rule apply when the carbon filter is back in? I thought the carbon filter would filter the stuff out so that when I do a water change I would StressCoat+ the whole tank again... Is it likely to be harmful if I keep doing this, i.e. will it build up? I am also now monitoring the carbon (i.e. date put in, date rinsed, date replaced) in the little log book diary of (mostly) woes that I now keep beside the tank. :roey:

I'll post here a few days after the course to let you know how they're going too.

I got it from my vets in Dunedin who had to order it in (domestically, not from overseas) - it is not in a fish-specific treatment, but in a tablet for mammals called Droncit. I had to be fairly insistent to get it as well, that's worth noting. They told me to use it in a course - 250mg/100L each day for three days, with a 50% water change each day, then put the carbon back in after the third day. As they are tablets I dissolve them in warm water, wait a while for it to cool, and add it in slowly right after the water change. It makes the water go very cloudy - this settles down after an hour or so - and there's lovely white residue on the bottom my gravel-less hospital tank at the moment (guess the fish have had snow, too!) but they perked up from Day 1. I have two goldfish and they both did a MASSIVE poo on Day 1, and a very respectable sized one on Day 2. Their dorsal fins haven't been so erect since they first got sick... happy, happy fishies. :love: :thup: I think the liquid form they use overseas would be preferable just from the residue/particle size perspective but it does not seem to have caused my dudes any harm - far from it. Hope this helps. p.s. @ Northland chic - that's ironic, isn't it? I think we all know a disgusting pond somewhere hosting any number of larger, healthier, better looking goldfish than the ones in many very well-maintained tanks!

Hang in there! I think I've found the wonder drug with Praziquantel (fingers crossed) - will get some more today and hope for the best and will update here later. I'm exactly the same as you - spent hundreds when I thought I was getting two tiny ornaments in a bowl that would live for 2 years max (and they would've in the bowl!) Likewise the little beggars have snuck into my heart... :love:

Oh, and the tank is a Marine Master AR450RGC if that means anything to anyone. :smln:

Wow, thanks everyone for your comments! :love: If only I had known all this, when I bought the fish! I did do a reasonable amount of reading before I bought the fish, and thought from my reading that a 38L tank would be fine for such tiny fish. Obviously now I know better, and now it is also too late as I have spent the hundreds of dollars (literally!) I might have spent on a better tank, on caring for the fish in their undersized tank. They don't exactly prepare you for fish ownership at the LFS... kinda unethical really. But then it wouldn't be great business acumen to deter clients from purchasing something you stock as a mainstay of your business either. Especially when you know they'll be back every five mins for treatments etc... :nilly: :roll: lol @ Coldwater Guppies pics... I will definitely be getting new stuff for the filter as I also suspect this could be a culprit. The other suspect is the calico fish, I'm convinced the little blighter is jinxed - nothing has gone right with the tank since it arrived (could be any number of reasons including it being goldfish number three and overcrowding the tiny tank). I'll also ease up on the StressCoat+. Oh and Wardley's goldfish crumbles? The fish don't like them, can't eat them (seems their mouths are too small) and I don't know why everyone online seems to think they're so crash hot actually. And I'm hanging in there cos I've grown attached to the little dudes (sadly the blackmoor was my favourite, he was very friendly and liked to hand-feed, would swim towards you when you talked to him, etc) - but I just like the little critters. 8)

Thanks folks, just feeling a bit disheartened with it all today and want to do right by my fish but did not realise at all the level of investment (of all kinds) involved when I took them on. How big is the tank? 38-40L approx How many goldfish? 2, fantail/comet crosses I think (see my profile pic, that is my tank, minus the now deceased blackmoor and nope, I don't know what it died of, suspect swimbladder) How big are they? Nose to base of tail, approx 1-1.5in. The orange one has a tail as long again. Whats the filtration? Not sure, filter is built into tank. It's a drop down filter i.e. the filtered water drops back down into the tank, aerating the water. It has noodles, balls, and a bag of carbon wrapped in filter wool. Whats your water change regime? 25-30%, 1-2 times a week, with 10ml of StressCoat+ added. As an aside, I feed them Nutrafin basix Goldfish Food (flakes). I don't think I overfeed and water readings always come back good (pH, nitrate, nitrite, ammonia). At the moment there is no gravel in there, just glass ornaments and a ceramic cup turned on its side as a 'cave' for them - basically a hospital tank setup. But no heater. Planning to join the Dunedin club at some point but have a lot of other things on at the moment which sounds lame but is in fact a bit of an understatement (thus perhaps explaining why I am emotionally overwhelmed with the state of the goldfish right now). < : ) wordhappy.

Hi there, I don't mean this to sound whingy, but as a serious question: Does keeping goldfish ever get any easier, or is it a constant struggle with diseases and issues of various kinds? I am quite new to keeping them and have spent many hours reading, researching, etc. but am finding it exhausting emotionally, physically, and financially as my fish have just had problem after problem after problem. If I don't see a metaphorical light at the end of this tunnel soon I am going to have to give the fish away. ( Hopefully, < : ) wordhappy.

Thanks for that. Can you recommend a good heater that will actually do that for my size tank? The ones I've seen so far have a temperature range of 17-35, so I'm not sure how I start out when my tank currently seems to fluctuate between about (I don't have a thermometer but based on the outside temperature) 2 and 11 deg C.

Hi folks, I have a small (38L) tank with 2x fancy goldfish of about 2inches long each. I have had issues with health of them and the blackmoor of the same size that I had before sadly died, all indications are that this was a swimbladder issue. Now with my two remaining fishies, I have treated them with a number of things (Melafix finally seemed to solve the last of their problems) but am tending to think now that their tank is just too cold for them to do well, and I would love to see the wee darlings really thrive, and perhaps be able to introduce a third fish again once I get a bigger tank. I have no heater in the tank currently so the temperature is probably sitting between 2 and 11 degrees, most of the time. Can I just get a heater and turn it up to 16 or 17 degs C or will that just kill them? I am pretty new to all this - what is the best way to do it safely? And am I on the right track with wanting to stabilise the water temp? Cheers, wordhappy.

Anyone got any feedback on how well or otherwise this works? I have found that so far Stress Coat seems to be working better than the Wunder Tonic did... also, how do you test the water with the Wunder Tonic in it? All the test charts are colour based... argh.

Thanks Zev. I won't be adding any more fish for now. I also thought blackmoors were hardier and was very surprised he was the one to die - although, talking to people I know who have had them, they all say they were the least hardy of their fish. I'm going to take the gravel out tomorrow morning and do a 50% water change, then add new carbon to the filter. I'm going to make it essentially a hospital tank for the time being, with a very bare setup, marbles for them to play with, and a couple of ceramic cups for them to hide in. This is until I can get a larger tank as a habitat tank. Whatever happens to Auriel and Finn (and I hope it's not the worst) I have the 'bug' now. <

RIP Sanya <

Ok, kinda figured this is fin rot. Have removed 2/3 of the water and replaced 1/3 (leaving some space for filter drop to aerate the water more as I don't have an air pump) and added Wunder Tonic to the replacement water. Through the blue/green I can see that one side of my orange fish Auriel has quite a few scales which seem to have lost pigment (maybe 5 or 6 scales). I'm curious to know whether it is a good thing to let some algae accumulate on the stones/filter tube. I cleaned the glass this morning as it had a little algae on it but I read this can be beneficial in the tank. I notice most pet shops have significant algae on their filter tubes/heaters, and stones. Can anyone help with this please? < Is fish ownership one big endless struggle of these sorts of processes, or does it get easier and less bankrupting as time goes on?