This is a pretty niche issue so I’m looking for advice from people who preferably have experience with fancy goldfish. They are usually highly inbred and do often not adhere to regular fishkeeping practices
I have more and more fish that seem to get issues with mostly positive buoyancy (one with negative buoyancy).
I only feed with sinking pellets and always presoaked. I have tried raising the temperature, starving them for 3 days and feeding descale boiled peas.
I have also tried adding salt. Nothing has any long lasting effect.
I am now considering using yellow powder (funox) as I suspect bacteria to be the cause of it.
Out of 18 fish only a few swim with the belly up periodically. Many og the rest seem to be struggling with boyancy nonetheless.
Parameters seem ok. Ammonia and nitrite are always 0. Nitrate is maximum 20. I do weekly water changes of 50%-70% The water is pretty hard and PH is high but I think keeping it like this is better than trying to lower it and maybe exposing them to fluctuating parameters.
The only other issue I can suspect is that I use tapwater and not old water. There is not chlorine in our tap water so I feel it is safe.
What are your thoughts about my situation? Is my considered next step, of treating for bacteria valid? What would you do? I do not have access to aquatic vets and no access to microscope.
Hey, thanks for this!
Yes i have the fish in two tanks. One is 920 liter (190gal) and the other 530 (150gal). Besides many of the fish are quite small, either because they are young or because they are rescues that have lived in too bad conditions. All fish are fancy goldfish (no commons). The stocking should be fine, and there are plenty of places to rest (both plants, caves and even tubes that they some times enjoy resting in). Filtration is actually exreme, without creating too much water flow. I have made a DIY rig out of large pipes that filters the water 10 x an hour) plus 4 sponge filters
What would you test for in the tap water? The local services do suply a regullarly tested report of what the water is like, and what they aim for, but it may be slightly different when it comes out the other end.
It is a good point about swim bladders being prone to permanent damage. It’s just a concern that i don’t know what is causing it
https://www.icp-analysis.com/products/copy-of-single-icp-mass-spec-test-fresh-water-w-usps-return-shipping?pr_prod_strat=e5_desc&pr_rec_id=c9d0ab16d&pr_rec_pid=7768412160194&pr_ref_pid=6781869686978&pr_seq=uniform
This is an example of what I’m talking about, they just test for lots of trace chemicals. Basically a check to see if there’s any nasties in there.
Being two different tanks means it’s more likely to be water.
Now when I say air pumps, I mean pumps that just provide air, goldfish need much more dissolved oxygen in the water than other fish, some filters also provide air and a lot of surface disruption will do the same job, but filtration alone won’t provide oxygen. Not having enough does lead to gulping air at the surface and could be your issue.
One other thing I realised I didn’t mention is food, you say sinking pellets but what brand? Some are better than others, for goldfish I like Hikari, something like this - https://www.hikari.info/gold/g_12.html
Thanks again! The water company has frequent and detailed test of the water they send out. I just don’t know what values to look at, in order to spot something wrong
The aeration is a good point thouth. I do have a lot of water movement around the surface, and three air stones, but i have noticed that they will spend some time around the surface especially after feeding (even though the pellets sink).
My other theory would be gill flukes, wich also could cause them to gulp air in.
I currently feed them Tropical (company name) Fan tail pellets, but have also used Dr. Bassleer pellets of diferent variants. I also mix it up with Tropical Krill Gran, and Tetra rubin. would love to use Hikari but it is hugely overpriced here!
Here is a snippet of some of the values the water company lists. Its a very long list of both content, temperatur, smell evaluation etc!
You’ll need to look up the acceptable level of each item. The tests I’m talking about colour code so that you know which ones are an issue but there’s nothing stopping you looking up yourself.
The foods you list, Tetra Rubin is a generic tropical food, not made for goldfish. The Krill Gran is for carnivorous fish. Dr Bassleer doesn’t seem to do a goldfish food. They’re a specialised fish and really need a food made for them that has a high veg content. I can’t find the fan tail pellets but if it’s a specialised goldfish food then I think it’s probably better. Hikari is pricey, but it is for a reason.
Are there any goldfish facebook groups or forums in your country that you can ask for food recommendations?