Goldie is gone

Loopy

:mad:

We have had 2 goldfish for nearly a year, my sister got us a new tank (slightly bigger) and we got some more fish, a black one, same size as the goldfish and 3 little tiny fish about the size of a pen top.

Three of the fish have died (one of them the original goldfish) and 2 of the smaller ones and I dont know why - the others look miserable and on their way out.

Help...

cobweb

wel adding the new fish could have affexted the water quality or maybe they were carrying an infection that your fish were prone to.
Do you have a filter or carry out water quality tests? DId you quarretine th enew fish before adding them to the tank wiith your original fish?

Loopy

cobweb wrote: »

wel adding the new fish could have affexted the water quality or maybe they were carrying an infection that your fish were prone to.
Do you have a filter or carry out water quality tests? DId you quarretine th enew fish before adding them to the tank wiith your original fish?

Thanks for posting - No to all your questions...:(

I had the others though for about 6 months and no problems.. The only difference is the new tank and obviously new fish. I think one of the original ones is a bit of a bully and I often see him 'bumping' the other's.:eek:

The are looking a lot perkier today - rang the place I bought them in today and they said to bring up a sample of the water, which Im going to do.

meptastic

Thing is, looptheloop, fish are very vulnerable to stress - this can be caused by any change, which would include both introduction of new fish, and change in water pH or quality. Which all makes them much more susceptible to the diseases which are normally present in the fish/water without harming them.

When you brought in the new tank and threw them all in, you introduced all of this at once. The thing to do with a new tank is to set it up, add stress coat according to the volume of the water to neutralise the chlorine, and also stress zyme to help build up the level of healthy bacteria in the filters, turn on the filter and air pump if you have one, and leave it run for a couple weeks.

Then you start to move your existing fish from the old tank to the new - preferably one at a time over several weeks, leaving a few days for the ecosystem to rebalance after each addition. Then and only then would you start to introduce new fish, again one at a time. Changing the water balance very gradually in this way gives all the fish, and the tank as a whole, a far better chance of adjusting and staying healthy.

Obviously all this advice is coming a bit late for you, but thought I would let you know for future reference after this episode is over. Yes, getting the water quality checked is an excellent idea, so you can find out what may be gone wrong in the balance. Seeing as fish have died in there already though, this will most likely have added to the ammonia levels in there, unless you got them out the minute they died.

Do take a look at the surviving fish as well, and see what is looking
wrong with them, apart from just "on the way out". Are the fins drooping? Can you see little white dots on their scales? If so, they are probably suffering from White Spot, which is a common fungal infection usually carried by goldfish, but which tends to flare up when they come under stress, such as for the reasons I described above.

If they do have that, there is an excellent treatment produced by King British, available in any good petshop, called WS2 I think. You use it in the tank every day, dosage according to the volume of water, and usually for 3 days after symptoms have disappeared.

I hope your remaining fish will improve and survive, and as I say, you just need to be careful how you introduce new fish in the future, and never push the equilibrium too far all in one go.

Loopy

Thanks meptastic, great post..

I definitely should have done a bit more research before I lobbed them all into a new tank along with new fish too.

The poor things are probably stressed to bits..

Great advice you give. My fish look fine today so hopefully they are de-stressing a little:)

I will know now in the future...

ValerieR

You don't mention how large the tank is. However, you are probably suffering the fact that your fish are poisonning themselves with ammonia and nitrites.
There are a few threads on this board about this, but, you need to make sure that some of the water is changed daily (add a water conditioner to remove chlorine and stuff from your tap water).
Your fish would also be much happier and live longer if you had a filter in your tank. See to get one asap imo.
If you had a filter, and once the tank is cycled (where beneficial bacteria have taken hold of the filter media - see other threads on the forum too), your water changes can be done less often.
I hope this helps.
Valerie
www.irishfishkeepers.com