Eyeless Orandas

[phaedraeos]

I work at a petstore that also sells fish. It's one of the last privately owned pet stores in Boston, and has really healthy livestock, can do special orders, etc - in all, one of the best LFS's I've seen and one I'm proud to work for. Unfortunately though, someone was not paying enough attention to one of the goldfish tanks, in which a bunch of Orandas were housed with some Ryukins. All the fish are still very small, about 2-3" in length. I'm not sure how long these fish were together, but it was long enough - one or more of the Ryukins has been attacking the Orandas, and over half of the Orandas had only one eye left by the time I noticed the tank yesterday (I only work weekends and I'm usually stuck behind the register.)

I already have a one-eyed Oranda that I adopted for the same reason - he was in a 30g tall with 2 other goldfish (all small, so it wasn't a lack of space that instigated it), one of which was a Ryukin that had already blinded one Oranda (that later got swim bladder disease and had to be euthanized), and had started going to work on the second. I didn't realize until yesterday that this Ryukin eye-attacking behavior wasn't a one-time incident until I saw the tank at my store.

Anyways, the long shot of this is that I adopted two of the Orandas that had both eyes gone. I was wondering if anyone else had experience with blind fancy goldfish, and if I could expect these two guys to pull through? Again, they're small, about 2-3" each. I'm not seeing any evidence of disease or infection around the sockets, and they look healthy otherwise. The problem I'm most worried about is swim bladder disease, because of the large amount of time they seem to spend at the surface gulping for food (even when there's no food in the tank.) I always feed that tank 1x a day at the same time each day, so that might help solve the problem but I'm not sure.

I was also wondering if anyone else had experience with Ryukins attacking Orandas' eyes

 

[bettagurl]

Aww, that's sad.

IME blind fish get around fine after a while(my big male angel had his eyes torn up by 2 other angels), they learn to go to the suface when I tap the tank to feed them, The only different thing is I keep they tank ornament-free, no driftwood or anything that they would run into if they got scared... my angel even attempts to breed(he uh, misses though, his mate gets rather upset and starts pecking at him lol)!

I haven't noticed my ryukin trying to harm my oranda, I have a female ryukin and a male oranda, he's the one folowing her around..

Hope everyone gets better for you!

 

[Dangerdoll]

I am going to assume that the one breed attacked the other due to limited food at feeding time. As far as the feeding, BG, that would be ok advice if these werent round bodied goldies. They are so susceptible to swim bladder issues, and feeding at the surface is the biggest problem with it. As far as feeding, I would suggest soaking food in a separate plate and then using a turkey baster or something to put the good in front of them for eating (sorry, forgot the term).

 

[bettagurl]

^^ forgot all about that, thanks DD :

 

[dixienut]

i also have an oranda with a missing eye, if the suppliers and the stores would feed them the amount they need and not the amount they want to afford, then this might not happen, but again mostly it starts because of hunger and crowded conditions
and no matter how much you feed orandas always think they are starving and gulp at the surface for food, i use lion head formula from hikari it sinks and then their isn't much issue but the fish just seem to gulp at the surface wether its feeding time or not, go figure?:lol2:

 

[phaedraeos]

Well, I'm down to one but he seems to be doing ok. His name is Blindy. I fed him last night by putting him in a livebearer breeding box (the plastic kind that floats at the top of the water for the female livebearer to have her fry in), and he ate quite a bit.

As for pellets, I've always liked the Omega One sinking goldfish pellets, which come in 3 sizes. I haven't ever had access to the Hikari ones in my LFS though.

 

[itsjustclair]

:goldfish:With my fish I hold the food in my fingers and put my hand at the bottom of the tank. This way my goldfish eat out of my hand, so do my dojos and my snails actually. Dojos eye sight sucks and they rely on their sense of smell. So I stick my hand in the bottom of the tank for them to get a fair chance in eating and since I've been doing this my goldfish don't go up to the surface as much in search for food rather they like to look on the bottom.