Did I kill my goldfish?

[Caper]

Puff was in the 10 gallon tank with 3 cory's. Now he is, ah was , the goldie who had lost his tail quite sometime ago; started to grow back some; other goldie picking on him; transferred him to 10 gallon.

He had red streaks awhile ago in 2 of his fins, but this eventually cleared up. Then, he looked as if he had cloudy eyes. I treated for a week with Melafix. The eyes seemed to have been cleared.

Anyway, the last couple of days he had looked as if his mid-section had "sunk" in a bit. Was still eating fine, swimming as of Friday night. I left early Saturday in a hurry so didn't take a look at him. Came home last night, he was a mess. Most of his tail was gone, the mid-section was REALLY sunken in. He wasn't moving, eating, nothing. He was no longer a pretty calico color and was breathing very heavy. He died today.

The tank water wasn't clear but I thought this was due to the fact I hadn't been cleaning the glass, wanted to get a build up of algae to get a new algae eater. It was due for the weekly water change, but since he had been sick I wanted to clean everything. I also did approximately a 50% water change. SHOCK, the color of the water was ah, I can only explain it as saying it looked dirty, almost dirty bucket of water used to clean a floor.

When I took the filter out to give it a swish, I realized I forgot to put the carbon filter back in. Now I know the carbon itself is no big deal; however, this filter has the carbon and blue "stuff" in one. So you see, the only filter was the bio filter.

So, with only the bio filter would this have caused my water to be so dirty? And, could this resulted in my poor fishies condition that led to his death.

Sorry, so long but wanted to try and explain what led up to his death.

Caper

[Naz_Nomad]

The bio filter will also have acted as a course filter anyway, so your filtration shouldn't have been the cause of your goldie's problems in the short term. Have you checked the quality of your water recently? It might be that there is an imbalance or pollutant causing your problems. However, it sounds like it could also be a case of advanced finrot if the fins were disappearing in a tank without any other obvious cause. Finrot is often seen alongside other bacterial infections too which can confuse the symptoms. The treatment for finrot is antibacterials and salt.

[Caper]

I haven't tested in a couple of weeks. I didn't think of testing today before cleaning as I just wanted to get a water change going.

His tail fin never did grow back entirely, however, there was no indication of anything wrong. When looking at him Friday night, there was no change in his tail that I could see, other than the sunken mid-section, and that wasn't all that prominent. The tail looked the same way that it has been for months and months.

Caper

[jn]

Sorry to hear about Puff Caper.

Look, he wason the downhill slide and sometimes its just too hard to bring them back.You tried your best.

When was your last water change? The water could have been murky because you dind't have anything filtering out the finer particles ('polishing' I think they call it!). Usually that would be a layer of filter wool (or plain untread dacron!). But I don't imagine it would have been the cause of Puff getting worse. You shouldn't need the carbon either.

Sorry that you lost him though..

[Caper]

Thanks jn

Last water change was last week