About flip over in fish Injections and medications?

Question

2 of my Black Moor Glodfish have fliped over no there sides and back.. It's beeen a cuple of mouths. I need to know were to get injectable medications and dosages to use.
I need to know what the right kind of medication is.

Answer 1

First off, medications should not be used unless you know *exactly* what disease you are treating. The illness of your fish may not even be something that medication will treat, and medicating them may make it vastly worse.

Black moors, like other fancy goldfish are prone to nutritional illnesses.... Too much fat or protein in their diet over time causes them to float or be unable to control buoyancy. If this is what your fish are experiencing, there are some things you can do to help immediately, and some very important changes to make with their food long-term.

Right now, to help "fix" the problem, foods high in roughage content (frozen/thawed peas, squeeze the shell off; daphnia; adult brine shrimp, etc.) should be the ONLY foods you feed until this is resolved. Feed very sparingly, just a tiny bit every other day.

Adding Epsom salt (Magnesium Sulfate) will help them pass any blockages as well. One to two tablespoons per ten gallons of aquarium water will do. In a few days, you can do a water change and dose the Epsom salt again.

Perfect water quality is a MUST. Test for ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate. A fish store can help you with this if you don't have test kits at home. Ammonia and nitrite must be ZERO, nitrate must be less than 20ppm. If any of these are not right, do water changes until they are. Make sure the new water is temperature and pH matched so as not to shock the fish.

Long term:

Goldfish require 10-15 gallons of aquarium volume per fish. So, if you have two goldfish, you'll need a 20-30 gallon tank, and so forth. Anything smaller than this will be bad for the fish, long-term, and may cause them to die much younger than they should, or may cause them to get sick.

Most goldfish food and tropical fish food is too high in protein and fat for goldfish. Supplement their diet with live plants and human-consumption veggies. Plants like Anacharis/Egeria/Elodea are a perfect choice since they can bite the leaves off easily. Veggies like frozen/thawed peas, zucchini, squash, cucumber and others are great as well. It will help to blanch them first, if you can.

These two pages will help you a lot:

http://www.wetwebmedia.com/FWSubWebIndex/gldfshmalnut.htm

http://www.wetwebmedia.com/FWSubWebIndex/gldfshsystems.htm

Good luck!

Answer 2

If the goldfish have been unable to swim correctly for a couple of months and still have not died, then they have no treatable condition. Odds are very high this is a genetic malformation of the swim bladder that will not kill the fish, but can not be treated either. Injected medications are very rarely used in fish due to the problems in dosage and administering the injections.

MM