my fish cant swim!?

Question

my fantail is always on the bottom of the tank. she tries to swim but can't seem to stay up and goes back down like a lead weight! help!!!

Answer 1

This may be swim bladder - she can't control (or is too out of it to) her movement and orientation.
Sometimes this is just how goldfish can get, because of a lot of inbreeding and weak bloodlines.
However, it is often caused by inadequate care. Fantails need 20 gallons of water per fish, no warmer than 65F, with a lot of oxygenation and strong filtration. You also need to be doing weekly water changes of 30-50%.
If your tank is possibly too dirty / overcrowded / underfiltered, immediately do a large water change, and look into upgrading in the future.
If your tank is of adequate size and cleanliness, try feeding her some shelled peas, broken into small enough pieces that she can easily eat. She may be bloated, and this may alleviate the bloating, then do not feed for a few days. Swim bladder is hard to treat :( I hope your fish recovers!

Answer 2

I Keep a few fish my self, every thing from fancy,tropical to koi in my pond out side.

Without actually seeing the fish i cant say for sure but i would have a guess at the swim bladder. There is treatments for it however i did not find it effective and it died a few days later, I would say if you suspect that it is not going to get better with the treatment put it down humanely.

Sorry i cant help more than that however if you phone the place where you bought the fish from they might give you a better idea of treatments available.

Answer 3

I had the same problem, test your water asap. I had two fantails, the boy got sick really quickly, he would lie on the bottom of the tank for hours, then his tail started to disintigrate, then he could only swim on his side, finally he could only float, even though he was struggling to stay alive, unfortunately he died. My female was sat on bottom of tank just before he died so i went to pet shop and bought treatments for fin rot (wat the boy had) so that she would be treated incase it had passed to her, and also something called ammo lock. They were being poisoned by the high levels of ammonia and nitrate/nitrite in the tank.

As soon as you can, do a 25% water change, start treatment for ammonia poisoning, and stop feeding for a min of 2 days. Over feeding causes excess ammonia which will make things much worse.

Try this and hopefully she'll be ok, she might be a bit slow getting back to normal but just keep on with water changes and treatment for at least a week (get your water tested, and if levels are still high, do another water change).

it'll take about 4 weeks for tank to cycle but stick to it and she'll get better hopefully.

hope that helps :)

Answer 4

Fish is infected with something ..If i was you i would remove it from the tank before it infects the others ..put it in a tank on it's own and see ..normally they die within 2/3 days or so...

Answer 5

It's a swim bladder problem, more than likely due to an infection. You can try the medicine for it which you can get in the aquatic shop but it didn't work for our fish when they suffered from it. We had three dwarf blue gouramis who died from this. Sorry to break it to you so brutally!

Answer 6

i had a marine fish tank and all my nemo fish start doing that, its because you've not got enough oxygen in the tank if you buy these plastic rod things from an aquatic shop ( they look abit like see through tubes) it will make bubbles into the tank and that gives them more oxygen. it can also happen if the fish have got white spots on their finns etc which means you need to get chemicals to put into the water or even try and feed it different food!

Answer 7

The more exotic goldfish can have swim bladder problems. This is the bladder they 'trim' to rise and fall, and maintain an even keel. Often they will swim nose down. I know of no cure for this, it will probably recover.

Answer 8

She could be unwell. greater info mandatory. what style of fish? What length is the tank? Is it filtered, heated? have you ever latterly accomplished a water substitute? examined the water? Is it a community tank or the different fish in any respect in the tank?

Answer 9

ha ha! sorry lol u made me laugh ( *puts on straight face*) well here are a few suggestions

1. get the tmprature a bit lower
2. get the temprature higher
3. reduce amount of food
4. hold her still in the water just above ground then drop here she if she gets the idea
5. keep trying! and dont give up

Answer 10

its got a problem with its swim bladder. this can make a fish sink or float as its like a boyency aid. there isnt much you can do for the poor thing im afraid.