I promise I'll post pics of him later, but he's scared right now and hiding behind some rocks in his tank and I don't want to freak him out any more. We have a small pond at the camp where I'm the nature assistant, and one of the goldies (who I recently nicknamed Chester) was looking really sickly last night, his fins looked streaked red and he was gasping at the surface for air. I was worried he wouldn't make the night, so I did a water change and he looked a tiny bit better. When I came back in today I thought he was dead because when I fed the pond he didn't come up to eat... but sure enough he came up when I added some fresh water to the pond. I snatched him up in a net to examine him and his tail and dorsal fin were all streaked red and he had a bit around his mouth and on the base of his pectoral fins. I knew that if I didn't take him home today, he'd die over the weekend, so I grabbed a container, packed him up, and brought him home with me (with permission from the head counselor of course, lol). He's a comet or common, and is one of the 2 surviving "feeder" goldfish in the pond. Chester is about 1" long and a gray-green color (all the kids thought he was a tadpole at first). He now has a whole 15 gallon tank to himself with a filter (no heater since the tank is already 76*F). I made sure the tank was cycled, since I never really checked on it, just ran the same filter from the previous set-up and the filter from my 10g tank and added some squeezings from a sponge filter. The params were:
Nitrate: 10
Nitrite: 0
Ammonia: 0
So that's great, but he's still hiding behind one of the larger rocks, probably just from being stressed (hopefully), but he was exploring the tank as soon as I released him. Don't worry, the tank isn't a permanent set-up, it's just to hold the two 1 inch feeders until they can either move into my rain barrel or I get a bigger tank :grinyes:
I can't really say what the red streaking was from, could it be caused by lack of oxygen? Or is it something like septicemia or ammonia poisoning? Otherwise I think he looks fine, I have to look at him a little closer though. What else can I do to make him more comfortable? Thanks for any help!
Nitrate: 10
Nitrite: 0
Ammonia: 0
So that's great, but he's still hiding behind one of the larger rocks, probably just from being stressed (hopefully), but he was exploring the tank as soon as I released him. Don't worry, the tank isn't a permanent set-up, it's just to hold the two 1 inch feeders until they can either move into my rain barrel or I get a bigger tank :grinyes:
I can't really say what the red streaking was from, could it be caused by lack of oxygen? Or is it something like septicemia or ammonia poisoning? Otherwise I think he looks fine, I have to look at him a little closer though. What else can I do to make him more comfortable? Thanks for any help!