morganlefaye morganlefaye
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  • Posted on: 30/5/2018 0:46
goldfish, new tank, 2 died one survived, I need help and advice please. #1
Hiya, I am very new to this forum. Just joined to get advice and talk about fish!

I had an orange goldfish for 2 1/2 years in a very small tank with no filter. His 2 friends passed away during that time and he was alone for 8 months until 3 weeks ago I purchased 2 more goldfish. One silver, one orange, black and silver mottled. All three were about 2-3 inches long.

Due to the small tank they were in and wanting them to have a better life I purchased a new tank, 60 litres with a stand, light and filter on ebay. The seller brought it round and set it up complete with 30 litres of his treated water. He told me to fill up the other 30 litres and then add daily water from my current tank into the new tank and vice versa so that in just over a week the waters would be the same and I could add my fish to their new home.

I did as advised and then I went to ask for a second opinion from a specialist fish store. Everyone said I could transfer the fish. By then I had my new fish approx. 10 days. Everyone was healthy.

The first few days my fish were so happy, they were swimming so fast and seeming to be eating better, playing in the bubbles and then I noticed the speckled one was lethargic and just hiding behind the filter box, not coming for food and not swimming. The original orange goldfish was fine and so was the new silver one. Both eating well and swimming happily. after 3 day I noticed my orange fish was turning red! I googled it and stupidly thought he was just changing colour due to his new environment causing him to change colour, as I read they can.

After 5 days my daughter ran in to tell me horrified that Goldie (the orange fish) scales looked like they were stripping off and turning white, the other two fish seemed to be nibbling at them. Scared I googled this and found that they may have had ammonia poisoning.

The next day I took water samples to the specialist shop for testing (This is all new to me and I never knew I could do this before) I showed him photos and a video of my poorly fish, especially Goldie who looked awful. He tested the water and found the levels were almost normal and he was surprised as he had expected them to be the darkest, and they were barely abnormal. He said maybe it had been worse and had righted its-self.

He advised me to do a 50% water change, use the solution he sold me to reduce ammonia, and not feed for 4 days then bring more samples in for testing on Thursday 31st May.

That night Goldie and the silver coloured fish died. The speckled fish was listless for two more days and now has begun to swim again at intervals but he still seems to be behaving oddly, he is not moving quickly as he did before this happened and he still hides for long periods behind the filter.

I don't know if he is ill or what the problem is, was it even ammonia poisoning to start with?
Could the speckled fish have been a host for an illness even though he has survived it killed the other two?
Could the person I bought the new tank off had bad water?
Did I do something wrong in the set up process?
How will I know when it is safe to introduce new fish?
My new mermaid ornament came today, but is it a good idea to put it in the tank? if not when?
Is there anything else that could have killed my fish I have not mentioned?
I really am sad about it. I loved Goldie, he was around for 2 1/2 years, and used to come to the side of the tank when you came in the room. He looked like he was in so much pain at the end and he looked so shrivelled up it was horrible. I felt awful thinking that if I had left him in his small tank that I thought had rubbish water quality due to size and no filter, he might still be alive and not suffered.
I can't believe that by trying to give him a better life and company he died.

Thank you for reading and I hope for help and advise? I do not want this to happen again!

photo of Goldie 2 to 3 days after he got ill, and Tillie the silver goldfish listless in the corner. Both died later the same day.

sorry I cannot upload the photo, it says the file is too large. that is the only photo I have. Other than that there is just a video.

They died on Saturday, the mottled goldfish was listless on the bottom of tank all of Sunday and Monday, it is today (Tuesday) that he has been swimming a bit but very slowly and he looks odd.
morganlefaye morganlefaye
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  • Posted on: 30/5/2018 1:48
Re: goldfish, new tank, 2 died one survived, I need help and advice please. #2
Update
Well even since I wrote the first comment, the mottled fish looks much healthier and is swimming in the bubbles and behaving much more as he did when I first introduced them to the tank.
fcmf fcmf
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  • Posted on: 30/5/2018 13:54
Re: goldfish, new tank, 2 died one survived, I need help and advice please. #3
I was sad to read about this sorry situation and also about the poor advice you've had from elsewhere. I'm not able to reply until later but, in the interim, I'd strongly advise reading the articles within the following sources of good quality information from reputable sources as they will go some way to clarifying what has occurred and how you can prevent further problems from occurring:
https://www.fishkeeping.co.uk/modules/ ... esheets.php?cat=Coldwater
https://www.fishkeeping.co.uk/coldwater_articles/ (especially the second and third articles)
http://injaf.org/aquarium-fish/the-goldfish-section/
fcmf fcmf
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  • Posted on: 30/5/2018 20:21
Re: goldfish, new tank, 2 died one survived, I need help and advice please. #4
When setting up any tank, it’s crucial to prepare a filter to process the fish’s waste. Fish excrete ammonia which is toxic to them. By doing a fishless cycle on a filter before adding fish, this prepares the filter – look at https://www.fishkeeping.co.uk/articles ... hless-cycling-article.htm .

In the tiny tank with no filter, Goldie will have been exposed to ammonia and nitrite and likely high nitrates. Although large (50%+) water changes daily may help to a certain extent, a filter really is required (it’s the fish’s life support machine) as well as a suitable tank size – details on that given in the links earlier. When you added 2 more fish recently, the levels of ammonia excreted will have tripled, causing even more toxicity which unfortunately the existing fish and one of the new ones couldn’t cope with, the existing fish most likely due to a weakened immune system as a consequence of chronic exposure to the toxic ammonia, nitrite and high nitrates.

The seller of the e-bay tank clearly was kind by bringing it round and had good intentions but unfortunately his advice was poor. The water itself contains little/no beneficial bacteria to support the processing of fish waste. Only if the filter had been supporting fish until a couple of hours before your fish were in a tank containing it would that have been useful; otherwise, the beneficial bacteria which had been in the filter media (sponge/foam, etc.) would have gone dormant and then died off altogether. Therefore, what was happening was that the 3 fish were going through a fish-in cycle – the change in behaviour is a classic sign of that, for a start, then illness setting in.

It is absolutely crucial that you buy your own liquid-based test kit for ammonia, nitrite and nitrates. A result is only valid at the time it is taken, so the result is not particularly meaningful, but your local specialist shop has correctly explained that to you. Water quality needs regular monitoring, especially just before a scheduled water change when water quality will be at its poorest. With ammonia and nitrite, “almost normal” is not good enough – any presence of either is toxic. Water change frequency and size can be determined if you have either eg if you do a weekly water change of 30%, then ammonia or nitrite should be no more than 0 and nitrates no more than 20 above your tap water nitrates reading – if any of these are higher than that, you may need to do 50%+ and more than 2 water changes per week.

This advice might help the speckled fish before he too succumbs https://www.fishkeeping.co.uk/articles ... ammonia-nitrite-spike.htm

Although the speckled fish being host for an illness is possible, it’s almost certainly the result of poor water quality – good water quality prevents disease and hastens recuperation in diseased fish.

Your best option, aside from buying a test kit, is to buy a suitable sized tank – a 240-litre tank would house the speckled fish and one or two companions (do not be tempted by more). Do a fishless cycle on the filter that comes with that tank – article link in 1st para – and only once it’s complete, move over the speckled fish and add his companion(s) at the same time as the filter will be prepared by that stage to cope with the fish waste. In the meantime, keep the speckled fish and the existing filter in the small 60-litre tank, or move him and the filter into a 145-litre Really Useful Box as an interim measure. The ornament ought not to affect the fish adversely.

Hopefully, armed with this better knowledge and by following this advice and those in the links provided earlier, this might help prevent the speckled fish and his companion(s) having the same fate as poor Goldie. If it’s any consolation, many folk (including myself) learned the hard way / only after the event – I still find it difficult to think about even although my goldfish died years ago. I am glad you have a video to remember Goldie by – I enjoy looking back at mine too. Hope this is helpful for taking things forward albeit probably painful to read under the circumstances of what has happened.

Best of luck. Feel free to ask further questions if needed.
morganlefaye morganlefaye
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  • Posted on: 31/5/2018 0:01
Re: goldfish, new tank, 2 died one survived, I need help and advice please. #5
Wow thank you ever so much for such a detailed reply and all those links! I will have a read now!!

As for the video I don't like to look at that honestly as it is from when he was I'll and had got a lot of red on him.

My daughter and I did some rock painting today and I painted a rock in memory of him x

The remaining fish seems to be much better now, enjoying swimming. I am going to buy the stuff to test the water when I go bck to the specialist shop tomorrow.