my goldfish poey . . .

Question
hello,
My goldfish used to float upside down a bit every time I cleaned him out, I
found out from a pet store after a few months of him doing this that I needed
to let the new water settle a for a least a day before a put him in it. This
worked.

but

now, for the last two weeks or so, hes been floating upside down on and off,
and sometimes he lazily swims a little and after a while he turns himself the
right way and swims properly. Sometimes also if I tap on the side of the tank,  
or if i just shout his name, he jumps a little, turns around and swims off.
Is he ill, or just relaxing, i thought he might just be really board and needs a
bigger tank  !

Thank you !

Answer
Hi

I do suspect that it has Dropsy , dropsy is caused from a bacterial infection of the kidneys, causing fluid accumulation or renal failure. The fluids in the body build up and cause the fish to bloat up and the scales to protrude. It appears to only cause trouble in weakened fish and possibly from unkempt aquarium conditions.

An effective treatment is to add an antibiotic to the food. With flake food, use about 1% of antibiotic and carefully mix it in. If you keep the fish hungry they should eagerly eat the mixture before the antibiotic dissipates. Antibiotics usually come in 250 mg capsules. If added to 25 grams of flake food, one capsule should be enough to treat dozens of fish. A good antibiotic is chloromycetin (chloramphenicol). Or use tetracycline. If you feed your fish frozen foods or chopped foods, try to use the same ratio with mixing. As a last resort add at most 10 mg per liter of water. Also, if unkempt conditions are the suspected cause, correct it.