Re: is my fish dying? help!
#2
Hiya.
The water treatment you need to get,if you haven't already, is something like Nutrafin 'aqua plus'. You add the correct amount to the water you are adding to the tank and it removes chlorine and chloramine from the tap water. It is normally in the section with the medicines.
The test kit you're best getting is the API liquid dropper one-it has test tubes in it and little bottles of solution for the different things you're testing for. It covers all the important ones like ammonia, nitrate and nitrite.
The shop will probably have some packs of paper strips that test the water. These are cheaper-but quite innaccurate so don't bother with these.
If you do a search on here for fishless cycling you'll see that it takes about 4-6weeks of having a tank set up and feeding it with some form of ammonia for the bacteria to build up.
There are links on here to the bacteria cycles too that keep your filter healthy.
You'll need to do a fish-in cycle now as you have fish, which will involve a lot of water changes and testing of the water until the filter bacteria can convert the ammonia from the fish waste to nitrite and then to nitrate. Once your tank is cycled you'll then be able to get rid of the nitrate with your weekly water change.
If you haven't got one already (I'm typing this on an iphone&cant check back to read your original post), then get a gravel Hoover whilst you're at the pet store as your gravel will need hoovering to get rid of the fish poo.
And one last thing-from your picture your tank does look too small for the fish...if you know the volume of it we'll know for sure, or post the measurements and we can work it out.
You'll really need to be looking at something like 120l minimum for 2 goldfish as a starter size as they do get big!!
And one last thing, when you say you change the filters each week, what do you mean? The bacteria lives in the filter, so the filter sponges just need a squeeze out in old tank water when you do a weekly water change to stop them from getting clogged up. If you put new ones in all the time then it'll be needlessly expensive as well as getting rid of bacteria.
Oh, and why only one fish sick? The other one will be sick but may not be showing symptoms yet. Remember, in the wild fish are prey so will not show signs of sickness till they are really ill.
HTH for now.
Have fun shopping.
Andi.
PS. Don't let you pet store sell you medicines etc. The problem here seems to be the fish in an uncycled tank. Get the water right and the fish will be a lot happier.