Please help sick - oranda

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tinks

Registered Member
Aug 30, 2010
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Hi All

I am new to forums and I am fairly new to the fish community.

I am having some trouble with my oranda – “ Rambo” I have had him for about 1 year and 3 months. He has obviously been happy because he keeps growing. I have upgraded his tank 3 times. The latest was 2 weeks ago. It was also the first time I started worrying about testing his water. Anyway 4 days ago I noticed that he was staying at the bottom of his tank. Which seemed unusual. When I noticed on the 2nd day he was still staying at the bottom I did an immediate 50% water change. Over the next 2 days I have bee monitoring the ph and ammonia levels. There is no ammonia the ph was a little hight but that is now neutral. He does swim a bit and then just goes back down again. Physically he looks good. He is now not eating as much and I have had to start feeding him sinking pellets.

I asked the “fish guy” at my local pet store and he was unsure as well and suggested I go onto a forum.

I am very worried. Please if anyone can suggest anything. That would be great.

Thanks :)

Tinks
 

Somervell

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Feb 8, 2009
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Anne
Could you post your tank parameters (size, exact (close as you can get) chemical readings, tank mates, etc? That will probably help the goldfish people diagnose what is wrong with your finny friend.You say you are at zero ammonia, but even small amounts of ammonia can have an effect on goldies, so doing frequent water changes is definitely the right thing to start with.

Do you have a chemical test kit, or are you using strips? Since you mention PH, I guess you have a chem kit.
 

GoldLenny

Senior Member? Do I get a 5% disc.?
When you moved him to the new tank, did you also move your water, gravel, decorations, filter, etc.? If not, then your new tank is probably going through cycling issues and if you used new water instead of the water from the old tank, it could have been too much of a change, too fast and that has your goldfish feeling bad. Fish have osmoregulatory systems that allow them to acclimate to their water conditions such as hardness levels, salinity levels, etc.... and if you change their water parameters too much, too fast, they suffer from osmoregulatory shock. Changing the pH or temperature can also result in shock issues.

Test your tank daily for ammonia, nitrite and nitrate and post the numbers here. Also do a 48 hour baseline test on your tap water. I have a blog article with details for this... just so you'll know what your baseline is so you'll know if your tank's parameters are just a little different or a LOT different.

Also tell us what chemicals you've added. You mentioned that the pH was "high" and is "neutral" now. Goldfish actually like higher pH water and if you used a chemical to lower the pH to neutral, most of those chemicals are NOT needed and usually do more harm than good. Give us all the details of what you did as something else might jump out.

In the meantime, if you don't have live plants, keep the lights out as that will allow him to rest more. Feed smaller meals maybe a couple to a few times a day... just like us, when we're not feeling well, we don't want to eat a lot but we still need some nourishment.

Here's a snip from my blog about fish health and diseases, dealing with shock and stress issues.

Non-Disease Diagnosis:
Are Your Fish Really Suffering From Disease? A guide to non-disease causes of illness http://www3.sympatico.ca/drosera1/fish/illness.htm (GoldLenny)

Shock diagnosis: http://groups.msn.com/FishHealth/shock.msnw (Hailey)
The original page on "Shock Diagnosis" is shut down but the original article can still be found here, on the Internet Wayback Archive, which takes a snapshot of every page on the internet and archives the pages... just in case something like this ever happens to your favorite site... so here's the new link... http://web.archive.org/web/20040131193318/http://groups.msn.com/FishHealth/shock.msnw
If you ever need to find a copy of one of your old favorites, if you have the URL, you can just go to the Internet Wayback Archive http://www.archive.org/web/web.php and copy/paste or type out the URL in the search field and then you should find that page. You may have to check a few of the snapshots to find one that works right. I'm not sure why this happens, but sometimes the Wayback Archive will crawl a page and pick up the background only, which happened to the two 2008 archived pages on the above link but the 2004 links worked fine.
Stress Related Problems:
http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/FA005 (DataGuru from TheGAB.org)
http://www.cs.duke.edu/~narten/faq/stress.html (GoldLenny)
http://www.peteducation.com/article.cfm?cls=16&cat=1791&articleid=2476 (GoldLenny)
http://faq.thekrib.com/begin-stress.html (GoldLenny)
http://www.****************/information/signs_of_stress_and_disease.htm (GoldLenny)
http://www.algone.com/fishstress.php (GoldLenny)
 

geekboy

AC Members
Jul 1, 2009
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At a bare minimum, I'd test for Nitrite as well. This is the second step in the Nitrate cycle (Ammonia -> Nitrite -> Nitrate), and is arguably the most harmful. If this tests positive, you might need to arrange more water changes, or possibly some salt treatment to help detoxify.

I would ensure that the water is well aerated. Make sure you have either an airstone, or at least some surface movement from the filter or powerhead.
 

tinks

Registered Member
Aug 30, 2010
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Hi

My tank measurments are L 74.5cmxW 44.5cmxD 40cm. I was told it was a 140 litre tank.

I have just finished doing more tests please see the results below.

pH 7.0
High Range pH 7.4
Ammonia 0.25ppm
Nitrite NO2 - 5.0ppm
Nitrate NO3 - 20ppm

I had not tested the nitrite and nitrate before. It looks like that is the problem it looks high.
Please advise as I have no idea. In the meantime I am going to do another water change.

I tried to give him a pea to eat ....not interested. He doesn't seem to want to eat.


I have no live plants in his tank and there is quite a big air stone in the tank. He is the only fish in the tank. I have bought some other little orandas but I am growing them a bit first before I put them in. Do you think that he might be missing them? They were in a tank next to him before I bought him the bigger tank.

Thanks so much. I look forward to your advice.

Regards
Tinks
 

GoldLenny

Senior Member? Do I get a 5% disc.?
OK... you definitely have nitrogen cycle issues since you are showing both ammonia, fortunately low, and nitrites, which are HIGH. Anything over 1.0ppm while cycling with fish is dangerous to the fish BUT you can do a series of PWC's (25%-33% partial water changes) about every two hours TODAY to get the nitrites down to 1.0ppm or below. You should add a pinch or two of salt per 10 gallons which will at least protect the fish from nitrite poisoning (aka brown blood disorder). You don't need a lot of salt.. just a pinch or two per 10G of plain table salt will do the trick. Whenever you do a PWC, add another pinch per 10G to replace what you removed. Don't just add the salt directly to the tank though... add the pinches to a cup of water and stire it until dissolved and then pour it into the tank.

So us non-metric people will know, write down these measurements also.
74.5cm = 29.3"
44.5cm = 17.5"
40.0cm = 15.7"

Is the 17.5" the height or the width (front to back) measurement? I'm guessing the 29.3" is the length of the tank. It's best to put your measurements as LxWxH and not use depth since depth could be from front to back or the depth of the water so it can be confusing.

Using the above measurements and this formula for inches to gallons, 29x17x16/231=34 U.S. gallons (UK gallons are a little larger) so the 140 liters sounds right but it could be a little smaller or your measurements could be off a little. 140 liters converts to 36.98 U.S. gallons so your tank is probably around 35 gallons, give or take.

The salt and the PWC's to get the nitrites down should get him feeling better. High nitrites affect the gill function on fish so he's actually not getting enough oxygen right now. The chloride in salt will improve the gill function so he will get more O2 when he breathes.... but you still need to get them nitrites down.

Next time you're about to move into a new tank, ask first or learn from this thread. If you move the filter (without cleaning it or changing the cartridge) and move the gravel (either use the same gravel or put the gravel in a colander or pantyhose/nylons and also use the decorations from the existing tank, that will transfer a LOT of the good nitrifying bacteria over to the new tank so your new tank will be almost instantly cycled.
 

tinks

Registered Member
Aug 30, 2010
3
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0
Hi GoldLenny

thank you so so much for your promt advice I really appreciate it.... I have just done a water change and I have added in the salt.

The measurments are correct. The Depth was the height. Sorry about that.

Thanks again.
I will keep you updated :)

Regards
Tinks
 
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