Goldfish and tank problems?

[Andrew]

Hi
Hopefully you may be able to help with a problem we have with my daughters tank.
We have two fish in there, it's a 45litre tank btw. One (a lion head I think) is approx 1.5" in length suddenly (two days ago) started just to float around, not swimming, and just staying in one place. It allows itself to get caught by the current produced by the pump etc, bumps around, and ends up face down in amongst the ornamental plants we have in there. When you disturb it, it swims for a few seconds then stops, gradually it starts to roll on its side, but it does correct itself, but seems to stop in a position by some plants. (as if it's exhausted!)
The other fish we have is a small black and gold one, & this seemed to have small white spots on it, so our 'fish' guy recommended a treatment to sort this out (he said it was 'ick'/ich?), and this we are using. This black and white one is very energetic, but the lion head is still very lethargic. The nitrate value is very low, and we do the water changes once a week (about 10% of the water).
We also have a lot of algae, bith brown and green, and it is all over the plants and the rock we have in there, plus the gravel looks like it needs a clean. How can we control this? Does the algae have a bearing on the problem her fish seems to be experiencing.

The tank has been up and running for about 3 months now, and we have had the fsh for approx 8 weeks.

Many thanks in advance.

[fish_doc]

The algae is not part of your problem.

The store was correct in the Ich/ick description and in giving you meds for it. What you need to do in increase your water changes from 10% a week to at least 20% twice a week. Goldfish are a messy fish and there is more care needed for them than most fish.

[rohape]

i had this problem with one of my ryunkin fantails. it has to do with their air bladder. it can be caused by sucking in air when feeding and not properly discharging it. you can try a few things, there are no medicine cures for it that i have found. one thing you can try is putting him in shallow water so that he dosen't have the opportunity to spin around, the shallow water can sometimes help it adjust its air bladder (from what i have read). mine made right hand turns and flips. from what i have read, the goldfish can live out its entire life like this. we finally had to put ours down after a little over a year of this issue. it was unable to eat properly, thus got very small, and it just stressed her, and the other fish out. it ended up getting fin rot, gill disease, no new fish, im assuming just stress. it was hard to watch.
if all else does fail, and you do decide to euthanise it, please dont freeze it or just throw it out, check out this link, it worked great, sad, but great. http://www.aquatic-hobbyist.com/prof.../cloveoil.html
good luck

[Andrew]

Thanks for the replies, I have also noticed that the one that is ill, has small tears etc in it's rear fins, not huge, but they are definatley not in the condition they were when we first got it!

[fish_doc]

The small tears could be due to high ammonia in the tank. If you could get that checked you may find out a few good water changes would fix that right up.

[MB75]

Your tank is 45 litres? It should rather be at least 300 litres and goldfish should be kept in groups, maybe 3 would fit in a 300-litre tank but I would rather see 4 in a 500-litre tank.
So I would say you have two problems, which make the fish sick: he is in too small tank, and he should have more friends. Water chances should be about 50% several times a week as first aid for the fish right now, and you should hurry in getting him a proper tank with proper tank mates.

Hope your fish makes it!

[Andrew]

the tank is quite large, and according to the shop where we got it (an aquiriam specialist) it will be OK for up to 4 fish dependent on their size (I'll double check my figure!)! But we are limiting to two or three of the smaller variety.
Unfortunatley our fish didn't make it **** ****and the other is not a happy fish, he hides a bit, comes up when we appear, so we're getting some tank mates as we speak!

Cheers for the replies, we'll keep here in future!

Thanks

Andrew (and Ellie, as it was her fish!)

[MB75]

Really, your tank is only about 10gallons so do not take any more goldfish in there!
Look at this picture:


Goldfish get really big, and to grow naturally they need big enough tank.[/img]

[osteoporoosi]

another schocking image about fantail size:
http://www.kevinwakeman.com/fpics/jun702goldy.jpg