goldfish question?

Question

I have an aquarium with three fantail goldfish in it. There is one that keeps getting bigger, one that never grows, and one that floats upside down almost all the time. A year ago I asked a friend if my fish was going to die. He said it probably would. Well, it's been a year, the other fish are fine, and that one is still upside down. Any ideas?

Answer 1

Change in diet may help. If you are feeding them dry food that is more than a month old it could cause them to float upside down. Since the problem has persisted for a year it could be a swim bladder disorder and won't likely ever right itself. Flake foods tend to go bad quickly. Corn product in the food is not good, GF cannot digest it. Try some frozen brine shrimp from Hiriki. HBH makes a food called Super Soft (tropical fish food) but it is an excellent choice to feed your GF. Internal parasites (worms) can cause a fish not to grow. If the fish is also skinny would be a good indicator of something going on inside. Medicated food may help. A good medicated food to get is Metro-Meds and Medi-Gold. You can find it on the web at www.goldfishconnection.com. It's a little pricey but worth it. You can feed it to all the GF, it won't hurt them. Please do not medicate your tank, even if the pet store recommends it, you will usually do more harm than good. Most meds kill off the good bacteria in the filter and mess up the system. Change your water regularly (25% once a week or 50% once every 2 weeks). Problems with fish indicate problems with water. Always fix water first. Good water and good food are the 2 main ingredients in keeping your fish healthy and preventing disease. Good luck. I've kept GF for about 10 years now and what I know I had to learn on my own and the hard way.

Answer 2

Without knowing more details about your tank and maintenance, we can only speculate. I, for one, would assume that your tank is too small.
The first that is floating upside down has serious swim bladder issues.
The fish that isn't growing is either stunted, or gets picked on by the larger goldfish to a point where he isn't growing.
What size is your tank? Fantail goldfish need 15-20 gallons of water each, so a 50-60 gallon tank would be suitable. If you've got anything less than 40 gallons, you're getting stunting and illness as a result of overcrowding.

Swim bladder disease is usually the result of poor water conditions. How often do you do partial water changes? Ideally, you should be doing about 25-30% once a week; although if your tank is undersized, you should be doing more than that, because goldfish produce a LOT of waste which is, basically, toxic ammonia.

Answer 3

Hi. Your fish has swim bladder disease. This is very common in fancy goldfish. Here is some info. SORRY IT IS SO LONG!
Why does my goldfish tend to float at the surface of the water and have a hard time going to the bottom of the tank?

Because it's got swim bladder disease.

Swim bladder disease is a multifactorial illness which primarily affects ornamental goldfish which have globoid body shapes, like orandas, ryukins, and fantails. It most often presents as a fish which floats at the surface, or a fish which stays on the bottom and doesn't seem to be able to easily rise. A fish which has normal buoyancy but is listing to one side or the other often does not have swim bladder disease, but may have other diseases.

In order to understand swim bladder disease, a cursory discussion of fish anatomy and physiology is necessary. The swim bladder is a small epithelium-lined sac in the anterior abdomen which is responsible for maintaining buoyancy. It has a close association with blood vessels such that gases can diffuse across into and out of the sac according to the needs of the fish. The sac inflates if the fish needs to be more buoyant, and it deflates if the fish needs to be less buoyant. Goldfish and some other fish have a special addition to this system called the pneumocystic duct, which is a connection between the swim bladder and the esophagus, allowing additional adjustment of buoyancy by letting air out through the digestive tract.

People have debated for years over the cause of swim bladder disease. It is pretty well established now that a number of things can cause swim bladder disease. Some of the things which have been suggested are:


A virus. The virus attacks the epithelium of the sac and inflammation occurs which makes the epithelium too thick for gases to diffuse across. Thus the fish is stuck at a certain buoyancy because gases have nowhere to go. This may be more of a factor in non-goldfish species.
A bacterium. There is little evidence to support this, but it's widely known that bacterial infections can cause the same kind of thickening of the swim bladder epithelium as viruses.
Anatomy. Globoid-shaped fish like ornamental goldfish are predisposed to problems with the swim bladder because their guts are all squashed up in their abdomen. This arrangement predisposes to food impactions, which in turn clog up the pneumocystic duct.
Diet. Feeding dry foods which tend to take on water like a sponge and expand in the fish predispose to food impactions. See # 2 above.
What can I do to prevent swim bladder disease?


As always, the golden rule of fish disease is WATER QUALITY. If swim bladder disease does have an infectious cause, your fish will be better able to resist this infection (and others) if your water quality is good. Regular water changes and water testing are a must.
Pre-soak your flake or pelleted food. This will allow expansion to occur prior to the fish eating it, and will lessen the chance of impaction.
Even better, switch to a gel-based food or other food source, i.e. frozen or live food. You can E-mail me at [e-mail] for a recipe for gel food.
Let's say I didn't read this in time. What can I do to treat it?

(Note: Some of this stuff is pretty far out, but effective.)


Feed your fish a couple of peas. That's right, peas. Just get some frozen peas, thaw them, and feed them to your fish. A professor of fish medicine at N.C. State College of Veterinary Medicine has done this in several cases with very good results. He thinks that the peas somehow encourage destruction of the impaction. No hard scientific data yet, but it's worth a try.
Fast your fish for a couple of days. Withhold all food for three or four days, and sometimes this alone will break up the impaction and return things to normal. Most fish can go a week to ten days without food and be just fine.
Periodic aspiration of the swim bladder works very well. Basically, you stick a needle in the swim bladder and suck out some of the air. Not something to be entered into lightly, but does work well. This is not a cure, but a successful treatment. The head veterinarian at the Baltimore Aquarium prefers this method.

Answer 4

As long as your fish has lived with this problem, I would rule out a swim bladder disease in the classic sense of the word. A swim bladder disease is a bacterial infection that can and does spread to other internal organs and that would have killed your fish long ago and possibly spread to the other fish. My first thought is a genetic malformation of the swim bladder. The fish would live quite a while, but have a rather poor quality of life, just as you describe. I would not expect that there is anything you can do to help the fish.

MM

Answer 5

nicely tetras are tropical fish and shouldnt extremely be saved with goldfish for many reasons.... a million) goldfish produce thank you to lots waste and in case you dont sparkling it out very oftentimes then all your fish will go through 2) goldfish are coldwater fish and conserving coldwater with heat you cant get the your best option temperatures for each fish it extremely is undesirable for his or her wellbeing 3) they simply shouldnt guppies can bypass the two way they might consume golfish solid, i feed the guppies in my pond goldfish food. in spite of the undeniable fact that it ought to no longer incorporate the your best option nutrition for the tropical fish, it extremely is yet one greater reason they shouldnt bekept collectively

Answer 6

Check the shape and flow of the bubbles of the one that is upside down. Are the bubbles forming concentric circles or tangential ones?

Answer 7

it could be that it just has a problem with its air bladder, which causes it to float upside down.