Lazy Swimmer

Question
Hi Chris,
My Fancy Goldfish can't swim anymore. He is a four year old in a 40 gallon tank. The tank is clean and the PH is netrualized when water is added. There are no plants in the tank and there is just gravel on the bottem. There is also only one more big goldfish of the same size in the tank with him. This is very sad that the fish is stuck at the bottem laying on its side all the time just wasteing away. The food that he used to eat before he got sick was Wardley Goldfish Ten, pellets that float at the top of the tank. He can't eat those now so I have been feeding him frozen shrimp that he can manage to eat a couple of. He has been like this for about 2 months! Please help, what should I do and whats wrong with him?

Answer
Hi Cory;

He has a failed swim bladder. The swim bladder is an organ inside the body just below the spine. When the fish wants to float up to the top, blood gasses fill the bladder and it goes up. When it wants to sink, the bladder deflates.  This organ can fail from an infection, but the infection is usually long gone by the time the fish shows symptoms. The fish will not be able to inflate it anymore. You can try antibiotic treatment with Maracyn 2, but I doubt it will make any difference. The bladder still has to heal. Often, it never does and the fish just lives out the rest of it's life like that. It can also fail from a genetic weakness, of which there is no cure at all.

Do the best you can. You are doing great giving him foods that he can get to. Keep up the good work.

Followups welcome.

At Your Service;
Chris Robbins