Okay, I've had a really bad run of luck.

First of all, my baby oranda Fat Tulip was put in with my fantail Ronnie after the death of his life partner Reggie.

They lived happily enough until Ronnie took against her and started eating her tail. Her tail was pretty badly damaged, so we moved her back into the other tank on her own, she seemed to take a turn for the worse after this, not swimming properly, drifting, floating, unable to keep herself upright - nose down, tail up, flipping over.

In a panic, I salted the tank, and added swimbladder treatment.
She's now able to keep herself upright, and mostly her head is above her tail now, but she seems to have lost the use of her tail completely.

The parameters are:
pH - not sure, normally 7.5
Nitrite: 0ppm
Ammonia: 0ppm
Nitrate: 20ppm

I have a video of her swimming:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UrdDmMXRZQ

Am I doing the right thing? What does this look like?

During all this drama, my other oranda bloated up and also couldn't right herself, but died in the space of 2 days.

I think after this I'm giving up on goldfish, as I'm really not having much luck at all, and it's not fair on the poor little things :/

She doesn't look too bad to me Her dorsal fin is up and she's swimming about so all to the good. I'd guess she's just a little stressed from her recent experience - goldies are sensitive souls. To chill her out a bit try a dark background on the tank and maybe on one side too - just some dark paper or drape a towel or something over it, doesn't need to be fancy. Might make her feel a bit more secure. Lots of live plants are also good for hiding in, elodea and hornwort are cheap and fast growing, mayb give that a go

Don't feel you're a bad fish owner - goldies, especially fancies, are not the easy fish many people think they are, mine drive me nuts sometimes with their various 'issues' - it's just the result of their line-breeding and fanciness

Thanks suey.

We actually had the tank planted with 4 or 5 plants, I removed them when I put in the salt, also because she was getting tangled in them and was unable to rescue herself. Will try the dark background this evening.
She showed me up a little in that video, before that she was just hanging in the water - she saw the camera and decided it was her time to shine!

I fed her two peas last night, came down this morning to her hanging nose down again, still not using her tail. Dorsal fin was up though, and lots of bright green poops!

Okay, I have a better video, I had to sneak up on her to get it, this is how she is most of the time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kxrI66E5m0

She's due a 2nd dose of the swimbladder treatment tonight. Hopefully that helps. But she seems completely unable to use her tail.

It's possible she has some digestive issues or a bit of an infection - fancies going bum-up have usually got something wrong with their guts be it indigestion, bacterial infection or parasite infection causing gas in them and thus upending the fish. Which swimbladder treatment is it?

Has diet been mentioned yet? Apologies if so, I tend to haunt the tropical section mainly, so may have missed a post or two

Some kinds of food can cause floatyness due to gulping at the surface. What are you feeding? I know Suey favours the sinking type and she pre-soaks other brands first. Frozen peas (de-shelled, chopped and zapped in the microwave) seem to sometimes help once a week. Peas = good unblocker lol

It's the Interpet Swimbladder treatment.

I also tried not feeding her for two days and giving her a smooshed up peas, she was a little better afterwards, but then back to floating.

Her diet is normally frozen brine shrimp with garlic, or spirulina, some Nova Red flakes maybe or daphnia, and peas or broccoli at the weekend.

The interpet stuff is an anti-bacterial so if she does have a bacterial issue that should put paid to it - are you using salt with the treatment as well?

To save my fingers, there's some info about diet in this thread here

http://www.fishkeeping.co.uk/modules/ ... =ASC&type=&mode=0&start=0

Yup, we threw in aquarium salt as well, by threw in I mean we measured it out correctly.

I think we're going to have to pay more attention to how she's being fed, and control it a bit more.

Thank you so much, I'll be heartbroken if I lose this poor little fishy as well, she's my little baby.

Okay, 6 days later and she's still hanging in there.

She's still not really much better, spending a lot of time floating about, but at least her head is higher than her tail now.

Her tail however is the problem now - it hasn't healed up at all, one side is broken into two or three strands, and yesterday / today I noticed white growths on it. I'm guessing this is whitespot :(

She's due the last treatment of the swimbladder meds tomorrow, so I presume I leave that another few days before putting in the carbon sponge and doing a water change.

I don't really want to give her more medication, should I try something gentler like Pimafix / Melafix first, or is there anything else?