Hey. I haven't been here lately. Been to busy playing RuneScape. Anyways, my goldfish has been doing this for sometime. He hangs out at the bottom of the tank, usually by the air bubbles, with his dorsal fin completly erect. Sometimes it looks like he's not breathing and I've been wondering if he's sick? This really worries me. I will clean and check my tank waters tomorrow and post them up. But just out of curiousity, what do you think? I mean, he's almost always at the bottom, sometimes he looks like he isn't breathing for awhile, and his dorsal fin is always completly erect. It's so.. wierd.

I think it is best to wait for the waterQ results. BTW, do you only have one fish in the tank? How big is the fish? What size tank is it?

Ammonia-
Nitrate-
Nitrite-
Ph-

Chemical filtration. I add aquatech to the water everytime I do a water change and sometimes just to make sure he has a good slime coat. I feed him floating pellets but I am changing that today. The tank is a 29 gallon and i'ts been running for almost 5 months. I change the water every two weeks (I'll start changing it every week when I get another fish) and I change as much as I need to get the gravel clean, usually 50% of the water. Only 1 fish and he's probably 4 inches from head to tail. No new fishes. Their isn't any wierd spots or anything on his body except for he has some blood veins in his tail. His unusal behavior is, as I said, sitting on the bottom for awhile, which I just realized today is usually at night when the temperature and the house get colder, and I also noticed that sometimes he'll be swimming and he'll turn on his side. Maybe it's because he's attempting to turn or something but just to be safe. Uh, the whole not breathing thing; he does breath, just in short breaths and then one big breath. After the big breath he tends to take a lap around the tank and then rest at the other end of the tank. He then repeats the whole thing. Goofy fish. Anyways, I don't see any of signs of unusal activity except for he always has his dorsal completely erect. Sort of like he's trying to tell me that he's fine.

So, that's about it. If I find anything new, I'll let you know. I've just got done with a water change and the water was remarkably clean. Very little waste. So I doubt it's the water quality. Also, I'm going to let the water sit for a day in the tank, let it mix with all the other water and stuff to make sure I get a more accurate reading, so I won't be adding the ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, and ph lvls until tonight.

Ammonia- 0-.25 (I'm ranging it more in the 0 region)
Nitrite- 0
Nitrate- 40
Alkilinity- 120-180
Ph- 7.6

I bought some Amquel stuff to help reduce the ammonia. I threw out all his old food and bought some new stuff: Freezed Tubifex Worms, Vitamin C Pyramid, Jumbo Shrimp, and Bio Fish Pellets. They all have vitamins in it, and I deliberatly did that because I think he might have a vitamin deficiency. It might just be matabolism though because he's active in the day. He seems fine other than the whole bottom of the tank thing.

My "friend" thinks that he is just tired and tries to sleep when night falls (if I knew how he came up with this I would tell you. He also thinks Pokey is an 'insomiac'). But I just ignored him.