Chronic Swimbladder

Do water changes twice a week and see if that helps. Its a good idea to test your tap water from a glass to see what the nitrate level is, then you know how low it will go.

Would also need to know how many gallons the tank holds, filtration used and how you clean it.

Ideally for a goldfish you are looking at 40 gallons + and an extra 20 gallons per goldie after that. A little *pearlscale* like yours will be out competed for food and should really live on his own in at least 10 gallons and more as it grows.
 
the reason your "cycle" is so high at the 5th day is because goldfish are huge producers of bio-mess. Usually, as mentioned, in a goldfish tank, it needs to be on the larger side because of this production as well as other things they produce. With this, any of my goldfish tanks always had twice the recommended filtering than that of a tropical tank and the water changes were done twice a week and at larger volumes. Without doing this, the fish are susceptable to a heap of infections as their immunity lowers due to the stress. For a pearlscale alone, I would go with the minimum of a 20 gallon tank myself.
 
I have to agree with fantail and Dangerdoll's last posts. Most people don't realize how much waste goldfish produce, I'm not even talking about poop but straight ammonia. That is why, even if they are small, they require much larger tanks than something like a guppy. Otherwise the wastes build up too quickly and you'd have to end up doing water changes every day to keep nitrates below my 10 ppm I mentioned above. Ppm is a measure of concentration (parts per million), so if you have more water wastes will be less concentrated, hence safer for your fish.
 
So .....4 days have passed without feeding and there is no sign of improvement in the problem fish. what i find strange is that the fantail immediately gains control of his boyency as soon as i turn the light off. so during the night he is ok but throught the day he is a constant floater. anybody know why this may be??
 
the only thing I can think of that would make light an issue is stress. Light can be a stressor to fish that are weakened or otherwise stressed. THat's why it's recommended to keep tank lights off for a few hours after new fish are introduced. Perhaps the light is throwing him off because he already doesn't feel well, enough that in the presence of light he is unable to regulate bouyancy. That's my guess :huh:
 
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