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.
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?