My poorly fish....

begley

So, Dave, our ancient fish is swimming on his side. I've googled and it's coming up with swim bladder disease. The advice is to put him in clean water, leave him a couple of days with no food then feed him a fresh pea. The missis thought I was kidding, but it says this on loads of sites!

We've moved him into a little tank that we've got (much smaller than he's used to) and the plan is to follow the advice online. I'm going to go to Pets At Home tomorrow to see if they've got a treatment that can go into the water. He 's laying on the bottom of the new tank on his side, but is moving from time to time.

Anyone got any thoughts or suggestions? All advice gratefully received...!

meames_2

You can get swim bladder treatment.

the pea needs to be shelled. Has he gone a pinecone shape with his scales raised?

Hope he is ok!

Froglet

Hi.There are a lot of things it might be,as well as swimbladder disease.What size is the tank he has been living in,what filtration do you have and how often do you do water changes?.Does he have tank mates?.Goldfish need a big tank.

He will be more stressed at being moved into a smaller tank,unless there are problems with the water quality.Do you dechlorinate the water before replacing it? all these things can have an effect on a stressed fish.In 95% of cases it is down to water issues.

If you can give me more info on the set up i may be able to help,or one of my colleagues on this forum may be able to help if i can't.
http://forum.practicalfishkeeping.co.uk/

begley

Hi, thanks both for your replies....!
The tank he is in is a large hexagonal one. I have no idea how many gallons, but it's about two feet tall by a foot and a half wide. He's the only fish in it, the others have died over the years. He's been the only one for a good couple of years now. He has a stingray (?) filter that we clean regularly, we change half his water every couple of weeks and give him a full clean every couple of months. We don't dechlorinate, but do leave it to get to room temperature. We've got a cleaning solution that we put in, and some bacteria treatment that we use too.
He's not impressed at being moved, and is now kind of spinning vertically on his nose then swimming round on his side. The tank we've put him in is much smaller, but all the advice online seemed to be to get him into completely fresh water asap! Just hoping he makes it to the morning.....

begley

Sorry, just read again. No, no pine cone shape and his scales all appear fine. One of his eyes looks a little red though.

Froglet

begley wrote: »

Hi, thanks both for your replies....!
The tank he is in is a large hexagonal one. I have no idea how many gallons, but it's about two feet tall by a foot and a half wide. He's the only fish in it, the others have died over the years. He's been the only one for a good couple of years now. He has a stingray (?) filter that we clean regularly, we change half his water every couple of weeks and give him a full clean every couple of months. We don't dechlorinate, but do leave it to get to room temperature. We've got a cleaning solution that we put in, and some bacteria treatment that we use too.
He's not impressed at being moved, and is now kind of spinning vertically on his nose then swimming round on his side. The tank we've put him in is much smaller, but all the advice online seemed to be to get him into completely fresh water asap! Just hoping he makes it to the morning.....

oh dear i don't know where to start.The tank is too small.The chlorine in the water burns his skin and gills.That is what the dechlorinator is for.The reason your other fish have died is because the filter is not able to cope with the waste from goldfish who are messy eaters and living in their own waste causes ammonia burns.

Please change half the water in the tank now.Then put him back in there.Though the water won't be declorinated he is at least used to it.You do need to get some though.How do you clean the filter,with waste water i hope.Putting him into clean water will do nothing for him at all nor will peas.

But ultimately your fish has been living in a body of water way too small and having been stunted and not growing to his full potential will now have seroous repercussions on his health.When you say elderly how old,They can live to thirty years or more.Common goldfish really should be in a pond.A tank is required to be about at least 50 gallons.

Pease take a read here,however i fear it may be too late for your fish.Red patches indicate a bacterial infection
http://forum.practicalfishkeeping.co.uk/showthread.php?t=74323&highlight=tale+goldfish

begley

Thanks Froglet, will put him back in now. We'll go and get dechlorinator and stuff tomorrow and hope for the best. And we won't give him peas...

Thanks for your advice.

Froglet

It's the best you can do for now but if you really want to improve things you need a bigger tank and a better filter.And if you do some reading up on the wonderful fishkeeping forum you will know in the future.Keeping fish really is not as simple and cheap as people think !

Don't feed him and you could try a pea or two but the problems are with your water basically.

Notsosharp

The other thing is to lower the water in the original tank to relieve the water pressure on him.

And test the water with a testing kit, Froglet is right, when there's a problem with the fish it's usually to do with the water. I speak from bitter experience, fish keeping is a steep learning curve!

con1888

My nieces fish had this, they got treatment from an aquatic centre that you put in the water. He is fine but has a bump on his side now. They have no idea what it could be but he has had it for a month or so, it's as if he has banged himself.

Froglet

Notsosharp wrote: »

The other thing is to lower the water in the original tank to relieve the water pressure on him.

And test the water with a testing kit, Froglet is right, when there's a problem with the fish it's usually to do with the water. I speak from bitter experience, fish keeping is a steep learning curve!

Test the water definitely but lowering the level will just make things worse as there will then be less water to dilute the ammonia and nitrite that is obviously present and it is that which is affecting the poor fish.