Is my goldfish sick? She is sitting on the bottom of the tank, only moving her head. Usually she is hyper..?

Question

When I came home, she was floating still, like now. I think she is physically on the bottom of the tank. I see her breathing. She usually moves like crazy when the radio is on, which it is now..

Answer 1

Hi Eleanor, First thing that comes to mind is don't have any music [or other noise] on loud enough to make fish react to it because water is an excellent conductor of sound & will amplify it several times over-this can be very frightening for fish.

  The bottom sitting may well be caused simply by poor water quality & the easy way to fix this is frequent partial water changes using same temperature, treated water. I would suggest around 30% weekly & you need to be testing for ammonia & nitrite, both of which are deadly. The water changes will dilute anything nasty in your tank-do them according to how your test result come up. You might also have a temperature fluctuation-your tank needs to be somewhere pretty stable in terms of temp. Certainly nowhere near any heaters or direct sunlight. The excellent link below covers this & much more in great detail.

  

Answer 2

She could be constipated. How often do you feed her?

You should only be feeding her a maximum of a pinch of flake/pellets once a day but, once every other day is usually better to avoid over feeding.

It would be worth introducing something new into her diet to relieve the constipation. You can either:

- defrost a frozen pea in some water, pop it out of the shell and break it up into small pieces. If the fish eats this, it will flush her through.

- You could add a liveplant into the tank, the fish can feed off this. This will add more variety to the diet and relieve any constipation.

-You could feed some frozen fish food as this will also relieve her by adding a variation to the diet.

It might be worth picking up a general fish tonic from your local pet shop as this with help if she is feeling lethargic.

Answer 3

In fish lingo, he has "crashed". It means the situation is very serious and probably fatal if you do not fix what is wrong right now but there is still possibly time to save him if he is not showing other symptoms. Do an immediate 20% water change and filter change. Vacuum any gravel in the tank as you remove the water with a fish tank syphon available at any dept. store that sells pet stuff. If you have not been doing 20% water changes every month, I would do a 30% change every day for the next 3 days. Make sure the water you add to the tank is the same temperature as the water in the tank and is chlorine free (not tap water). Use a water treatment for tank fish to treat the water you are adding to the tank. A sick fish (healthy ones too) will benefit from adding aquarium salt to the water (don't use table salt!). Add the amount recommended on the box for goldfish. Also remember that goldfish need cooler water than tropical fish. Never use a tank heater for goldfish. If you have a light on your aquarium, turn it off while your fish recovers.

Good luck and hope he makes it!

P.S. I found this on Google

Answer 4

probably o.o