I've been trying to cure my goldfish for over a year! Any ideas on what to do now?

[Kitty1297]

Sorry I haven't responded all week! When I got home last sunday, the food I had ordered was already here and Penny had a little bit of red on her. I started feeding her the medi-gold and this is the longest that she's been without red. We are doing a water change today as the normal weekly water change. All the fish go crazy for the food. Thanks so much for the information. I would like to get that canister filter and I'll be saving up money for it. You guys have really helped me out! This site is really great!

I also had another question. Someone on The Goldfish and Aquarium Board (thegab.org), mentioned that once carbon is exhausted it releases all the toxins back into the water. I was wondering if you guys knew anything about that. They also mentioned that adding salt to the tank would make the ammonia remover release it's toxins back into the water as well. I never heard anything about that though . . .

 

[Rbishop]

No..it doesn't release back into the water...it is a chemical bond that takes severl hundreds of degrees to break free.
In most cases, you don't need carbon, such as to remove odors, remove meds, or get sparkling clarity for show pics. But, even expended from it's funcetion, it makes a great media for BB growth.

 

[Rbishop]

No to the salt also, which is something else you do not need. BTW..check your inbox for PMs...

 

[finsNfur]

Yes, no need for salt, in fact salt can irritate goldfish and interfere with their slime coat. But I'm sure there is a better way of phrasing that, hopefully someone else will come along and be more specific.

Regarding the toxins in the drain, that is interesting, I never heard of that before. We don't have city sewers though, we have a septic tank. So it would be released directly into our leaching fields and into our woods, and that does make me pause and think about it, we have wetlands behind our house. Hopefully it's thoroughly diluted by that point. Good news is though, my tanks are so established that I rarely feel the need to test the water.

 

[Kitty1297]

Wow, I didn't know that salt wasn't only not helpful but instead harmful to them! So I should never use it ever again right? To think that so many places tell you that salt is a great treatment for some of their diseases and stuff! Sheesh! Now I feel that if I knew that salt wasn't any good from the beginning, I would have probably saved some of my fish, and some of my friend's fish. I feel as though we've only made the situation worse. She recently lost a fish . . . it sucks because I feel like knowing what I do now about goldfishconnections.com and the salt being bad, that we might have been able to save her fish.

Anyways, I just ordered the API Master test kit from Amazon. I threw in a new air stone and some new tubing to get the free super saver shipping. (I was spending the same amount of money either way, so I though, I may as well!)

By the way, Penny looks great! The medi-gold is working really well! I haven't seen any symptoms since I started feeding it to her. The only thing I saw was a tiny red spot yesterday and I think it was from rubbing against something, because it never got bigger and was gone within 12 hours. Her and the other fish are really ecstatic! They go crazy for the medi-gold!

 

[finsNfur]

Don't feel bad about the salt, there are many conflicting opinions on it. Were you using salt as well as other medications all this time? That could account for some of her issues, but who knows. I'm glad to hear she is getting better. Generally it's not a good idea to combine meds with salt for goldfish, and salt is just a temporary treatment lasting a few days, not long-term. And you should only use certain types of salt, etc. Just keep up with the water changes which will reduce the salt content. How long have you been feeding them the medi-gold? Since it contains antibiotics you should only use it for 2-4 weeks. But it sounds like things are definitely improving, good news!

 

[Kitty1297]

No, I don't typically use salt with other medications. I try to keep the medications separate. The only salt I've ever used is the Aquarium salt that Petsmart sells. Today is the end of the 2 weeks that I've been feeding the medi-gold.

 

[Kitty1297]

It has been a while since I updated last and I felt like I had things under control and that Penny was doing well. For the last 3 weeks, we've been doing about 2 water changes a week. We generally do 14 to 17.5 gallons each change. So we went to my parents house for a little over a day last weekend. The water was changed on Friday, all the fish looked great on Saturday afternoon before we left, and we came back Sunday evening. When I saw Penny, she had developed a lot of red. I remember testing the ammonia, but I don't recall if there was a little ammonia or none at all. I should have wrote it down. Anyway, I fed her the jump start food both days. We did a water change on Monday and the red was going away. It looked like the red was completely gone. Well, on Thursday, I fed them a little too much and Penny got bloated. She looked like she wasn't bloated on Friday night when I fed them, (I fed a lot less in order to avoid the bloating) but on Saturday (yesterday) morning she looked really bloated again. So last night I skipped the food and I noticed a little bit of red on her. I wasn't sure if the red was leftover from last weekend or if it was coming back again. I tested the ammonia and it tested at 0. Today, I woke up and she had more red on her and her dorsal fin has milky white spots on her. I tested everything with the master test kit and my results are:

Ph: 7.6
Ammonia: Between 0 - 0.25, it looked less than 0.25
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 0

I don't know what to do with her. I have a few photos that I managed to get of the red spots.
Here are some photos I managed to get. Sorry that some of them are blurry! She's not very photogenic.

 

[Rbishop]

What food are you feeding?

 

[Kitty1297]

She was on medi-gold food for about a month. I started feeding the jumpstart food on monday. (Both from goldfishconnections.com.) The jumpstart was suggested to feed after the medi-gold. It says on the packaged, "To restore vital life-supporting nutrition after sickness or using medications, feed 14 to 30 days."