On the subject of using warm water from the kettle and not the hot tap. Does this also apply with water from a combi boiler where the water is drawn from the mains and heated up as it passes through the boiler? Or is it just for hot water tanks? Sounds silly I know but was just curious.

ok thanks everyone...will do a big water change tomorrow. We are not going to get another fish just yet anyway as the tank is in the kitchen and we are having that refitted after christmas so the tank will have to be moved to a new location....may get a new one.

Hmm....how can i reduce the nitrates in the water? Do I just do more frequent water changes?

He was eating ok up until the day he actually died, and he was slightly smaller than the redcap.

I only have the dipstick method but the nitrates were 0, nitrates between 25 and 50. The only thing that was slightly different was that the general hardness was slightly higher than it has been in the past.

Following the death of the bubble eye a few weeks ago, decided to buy an orange oranda instead, as a companion for my redcap as he was on his own. After 2 weeks of being a happy healthy fish, Gary the orange oranda went into the corner with clamped fins and died! The water readings were normal and I could see no reason why he had become so ill. The redcap is swimming about perfectly happily and I wondered if he could be picking on any new smaller fish that I buy? Hes on his own again now and is staying that way for the time being!

I have a recap oranda, Brainbox, (my son named him) that Im quite attached to. We have had him for just over a year now and hes really friendly, I was so upset when he went down with the dreaded whitespot last month, but , touch wood , he is fine now.

I too had an outbreak of whitespot for the first time ever...but I had a new fish that may have brought it in.
The stuff I used said it wouldnt kill off bacteria and it turned the water blue for a couple of hours, but it soon disappeared.

LOL...my hubbys like that too. He has to work out everything for me!

We had a black moor that used to get stuck in things. We used to have a decoration in the tank that looked like a hollow tree trunk with a gap at the bottom to put the pipe for an airstone if you wanted to have the bubbles coming out of the top. Our black moor used to squeeze himself through that gap and get stuck. We had to take the tree trunk out in the end!