Rhykin Fish

Question
Hello.  I have two fantail Rhykin gold fish, one of them has always had floatiation problems but this time he/she was found one mornming at the bottom of the tank upside down it has now spent four days there with a little nudge from the other fish he will turn over and back again and not move, it is now the right way up, but stays in the same spot nearly all day. It has not had food and seems a bit thinner. I have also noticed a black mark around its mouth. It has a big enough tank which is cleaned out every month with filter and a small snail for company, my four year boy does not want it to go to fish heaven !! any suggestions. Many thanks, Denise.

Answer
Oh, I'm so sorry you lost Bobo. But please wait on getting more fish until the tank is through the break-in period though. The tank isn't ready for a full load of fish yet. Read my article on new tanks so you know what's going to be happening in your new tank over the next 6 weeks. Here is the link;

http://www.xanga.com/Expert_Fish_Help

I feel so sorry for the fish in the bowl at your friend's house. Fish in that environment are not happy at all. They are surviving, and barely so. Fish waste is producing ammonia and it builds up, burning their skin, eyes and gills every moment of every day. They also lack oxygen and risk permanent nerve and tissue damage. If you ever see goldfish in bowls at the surface with their mouth sucking the top like they are eating but there is no food, it is a desperate attempt to get oxygen past their burned gills. There are places now where it is actually illegal to even own a fishbowl and keep fish in it. It's just cruel to use them. Poor little guys. Maybe you could let them have your old 10 gallon? At least the fish have a better chance. Just don't let them buy more fish! Yikes! Here is a good article about goldfish and what their needs are;


http://www.firsttankguide.net/goldfish.php

Good luck and give your little fella an extra hug today from me. ;-) I'm a mom of four kids with lots of pets over the years so I know what you've been through.

Let me know if your need any more help...

At Your Service;
Christine Robbins







Hi Denise;

I saw your question to me on Kasamba.com so I came over here to answer as a follow-up instead. Now that I have more information from you it will be easier to help. I gave a basic response over there but you don't need to do anything more with it. This answer is very long and detailed but stick with me here. Hopefully we can get Bobo back on the road to recovery and get your new tank balanced with a minimum of effort and problems...

Change some water and vacuum the gravel in Bobo's tank right away. Replace 25% of the water every day for the next 4 or 5 days. Fresh clean water boosts the immune system and helps the appetite too. It's okay right now that he isn't eating. His body needs to try and heal right now and may not have enough energy to digest food at the same time. Fish can go for more than 2 weeks with no food at all so unless it has already been that long since he has eaten there is still time for him to recover. Don't try to feed him until he seems hungry. Leftover food from trying to encourage eating can create more problems. Wait until he is ready. I really think his inability to stay upright is related to digestion anyway. Constipation can cause gas to build up in the digestive tract. This sometimes makes the fish swim belly-up and/or stop eating. It could possibly have progressed to an intestinal infection causing gas in his digestive tract. If it were my fish I would medicate him with a fish antibiotic called "Maracyn Two". Maracyn Two has minocycline and this particular antibiotic absorbs inside the fish to get where infection is. The only other antibiotic that does that is called Kanamycin and it also absorbs inside. One of those two medicines are what you need. Use whichever one you can find.  You may have to look at a lot of fish med labels, but do the best you can. You can even buy them online. Don't waste your money on any other product no matter what the labels claim. They just aren't going to work for internal infections in my experience, unless they are injected (needs a vet) or they are in a medicated food and Bobo isn't eating so that won't work either. It's perfectly okay to change 25% of the tank water every day while using the medication. The medication is added every 24 hours and the previous dose is decayed by that time. That's why we have to add it daily. Do the daily change right before you add that day's medicine. He needs the fresh water but needs the medicine too so hopefully both together will nail this thing.

Once he begins eating again, feed Bobo some squished green peas. Peas act as a laxative. Cook a pea or two and pop it out of it's little round shell. Squish it into tiny bits and give some to him. You may have to offer the chunks on a toothpick or a chopstick or something. Peas are a food that goldfish should have at least 3 or 4 times a week anyway so offer them to your other fish too, in place of a regular feeding. Goldfish are mostly vegetarian fish. The commercially prepared diets we feed them are too high in protein so they need more fiber from vegies. I feed mine peas, romaine lettuce, cooked green beans, cooked shredded carrots, cucumber slices and cooked squash slices. They need the fiber.

'Floating upside-down' is often misdiagnosed as swim bladder failure. It really isn't. With swim bladder failure the fish either sinks down and can't swim up or floats at the top unable to swim down but the fish is upright with it's belly downward. Gas in the intestines, not 'swim bladder failure' is what causes fish to swim belly-up. The ironic thing about both upside-down swimming and swim bladder failure is they are usually both caused by constipation and can occur together. Constipation is caused by overfeeding or feeding high-protein food and no vegies in the diet. The swim bladder is close to the digestive system in goldfish and if there is constipation it can cause inflammation and the swim bladder can't function properly. The swim bladder is an internal organ below the spine that controls buoyancy. It has two chambers (one in front one in back) that hold blood gases. When the fish wants to float up in the water, the swim bladder fills with blood gases. When the fish wants to sink down again, the swim bladder dissipates the gases back to the blood. When the swim bladder fails the fish can't swim down to the bottom and stays at the top floating uprightly, often with it's dorsal fin sticking partly out of the water. Or, it sinks down and can't get to the top without struggling, sometimes laying on it's side. Ryukins are quite prone to swim bladder problems. Ryukins and other round shaped goldfish can also have swim bladder deformity that causes their swim bladder to be unable to function properly just because of their body shape. The two swim bladder chambers or "lobes" are joined by a small section in between. In many round goldfish this small section is compressed or blocked and can't work properly anymore. It becomes progressively worse as the fish grows larger and more mature. Their other organs just can't fit in there properly and the fish loses the use of it's swim bladder as everything compresses. It's just one of the problems associated with selectively breeding fish to develop those unusual body shapes. 'Nature' didn't do that to them, people did. We don't see these fish in the wild. All fancy goldfish came from the original straight-tailed longer bodied common goldfish. They are usual and cute, but definitely man-made.

Now about your new tank;

If your other tank has no fish in it yet, it needs a fish or another way to add ammonia for the beneficial bacteria to develop and grow. Just adding gravel or decorations from an established tank to "seed" it with bacteria isn't going to work unless the bacteria has 'food'. It will simply die of starvation after a few days. Fish waste, chunks of shrimp, fish food, or "liquid non-sudsing ammonia" all can provide the ammonia that the beneficial bacteria needs for food. Here is a link to more info about the details of "fishless cycling" if you want to see it;

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/faustus/nicoldaquaria/fishless.htm

What you might want to do is go ahead and add the healthy Ryukin to the new tank along with most of the gravel and all the decorations from the little tank. It will give the new tank the bacterial boost and "food" it needs and Bobo gets the space and relaxation he needs with more room to recover. The healthy fish is adding extra waste to the smaller tank that makes Bobo more sick, so why not put it to good use and get the new one going instead? Just feed the fish in the new tank VERY sparingly. He only needs 3 or 4 flakes or tiny pellets once a day for right now. He won't starve, he just may make you think he is by 'begging' constantly. He isn't that hungry, just trying to make you think he is. Ryukins are goldfish and goldfish are natural-born gluttons and want to eat constantly. That's just what they do. It's just not in their best interest to eat that much. The more food you feed him in the new tank, the greater the chance that the toxin level will rise to lethal levels.

Get some test kits that monitor the ammonia, nitrite and nitrate so you can watch the new tank's break-in progress. Make a 25% water change if those levels ever enter the "danger zone" according to the literature that comes with the kits. You can get back to me here about that if you need to. Send me a message on Kasamba if you can't get through on AllExperts. My question load gets maxed-out quickly here so it can be hard to get a follow-up in.

Keep me posted and I hope Bobo feels better very soon...

At Your Service;
Chris Robbins


******************

Hi Denise;

Without knowing the size of the tank, size of the fish or what type of filter, I can only take some guesses at what could be wrong. I'll give you a few ideas and we can go from there;

Black marks on goldfish usually indicate ammonia burns. Not every goldfish exposed to ammonia reacts the same way. Some are stronger and some are weaker, for various reasons. Genetics, age, existing unseen health conditions, etc. We don't always know. There may be a water quality problem that has caused the ammonia level to rise and is contributing to this particular fish's illness. Ammonia is basically fish waste, and goldfish make a lot of it. Goldfish need 10 gallons of tank water per fish and a weekly 25% water change with gravel vacumming because they are so messy. Once a week water changes keeps the water consistently clean and healthy. It boosts the immune system and helps the fish stay strong. Changing more than 25% at a time can shock your fish and make them sick too. Overcleaning the tank can cause the biological balance to be disturbed, also making the fish sick. It basically sends the tank into a "break-in period" on a constant basis. There are colonies of beneficial bacteria in your tank's gravel, filter and on tank surfaces that consume the fish waste (ammonia). When we clean the tank too vigorously, it kills this beneficial bacteria and the ammonia rises. The break-in period can take 6 weeks or so to complete until the beneficial bacteria finally grows enough colonies again to consume all the waste toxins. Here is a link to more about it on my own web page;

http://www.xanga.com/Expert_Fish_Help

Your other fish may be bullying the sick one too. It can be very subtle and it may look like they are "playing" or looks like the other fish is curious or "concerned". Bullying happens before we know it sometimes because we often attribute human behaviors and emotions to our fish. These emotions are very rarely truly exhibited by our wet pets. Fish are generally out for 'number one', and it isn't the other guy. Their basic motives are food, territory, and breeding, all reasons for bullying. Fish can sometimes harass another so much that it literally becomes sick from the stress. It might be good to separate them for a while to see if the sick one improves. Or, you can put a divider in the tank to give him a break as long as the tank is large enough. They are available at fish stores. Change water at least once a week, even every other day until he does better would be good. Just don't change more than 25% at a time. It will boost his immune system and help him heal.

Let me know how it's going and what you think could be going on based on my suggestions. I hope he feels better soon...

At Your Service;
Chris Robbins