I'm having some problems with my goldfish, and hope somone out there can help. I best start answering the above questions the best I can:

Not sure about any of the levels, but will have some water tested today and post the levels later on today. I have a 4' x 1..5' x 2' tank, (not sure how to work out the volume) that has been running for around 3 months. It uses a submereged Fluval 4 filter with foam inserts. I feed my fish on flakes and some kind of floating food. In the tank there are 2 large goldfish (around 7-8") a medium goldfish (about 5-6") and 5 small goldfish (2-3"). I've had teh larder ones around 3 months and the smaller ones about 2.5 months. I change about 20% of the water every week and use Nutrafin Water conditioner by Aqua plus.

I've had a few problems with the tank, when I first set it up the water was always cloudy, but this was soon found to be so called 'new takn sindrome' and I was told that I was washing my filter too often and probibly feeding them too much. Soon after that my tank cleared up and everything was going fine till about a month ago I noticed that one of my big fish had what looked like grains of salt on his fins. After a little research I thought he had white spot, he seemed to have all the symptoms so I whent out and bought some white spot treatment and followed the instructions, but over a week later no change. So I bought another treatment from another brand. A week and a bit later and no change again, then after a little more reading I discovered that the white spots are supposed to fall off the fishafter about a week, but this fish has had the same spots on his fins for nearly a month now. Any suggestions on what could be the cause?

Also, during this period I lost a medium fish, he seemed happy enough, then one day had black start to appear around his mouth and the front of his head. After a little inspection I thought that he must have banged his head somewhere and that this black was a briuse. A day later and I came down to find him floating around the tank. What scared me was that where the black had been there was now a big hole in his head, but im not sure if this had happned before he died, or if the fish had eaten him after death. Anyway, i have come down this morning and one of my small fish has the same black marks, only he has more of them, mainly on his head above hie eyes, in his eyes and on his lips. I'm a little worried now as I really dont want to lose another fish. What should be my first plan of action, should I put him in a tank on his own? Or is he better off where he is?

I'll try my best to get the levels in the tank posted today, and I'll also try to get some photos of the fish.

Thanking you in advance for all your help.

Hi Tom,

Wecome to koko's!

Please post test results for ammonia, nitrIte and pH ASAP. Very important data.

BTW, according to your quoted dimensions, your tank is ~90 gals which is a good size.

Do you have any snails?

What do the white spots look like? Do they look like little grains of salt or very fine powdery yellow/gold coloured? Or do they look like a raised spot that is waxy and hard?

With the black spot, how big is the hole in the middle on the dead fish? Is the black spot large like a patch or more like spots?

Please post back soon.

Hi there, did the tests this morning and these are the results

pH 6.5 - 7
amonia 0.4 mg/l
nitrite 0.25 - 0.5 mg/l

I'm guessing that since these values are supposed to be 0 that thuis may be where the problem is coming from. How do I get these levels down?

The white spots on the large fish's fins are like big grains of salt, and like I said have been there for nearly a month.

The black on the fish head is more of a pach than spots, it looks like someone had spilt black ink onto his head and some has stayyed on his head and some has run down the sides and into his eyes. I think that is the best way of describing it. I will try to post a photo soon.

The hole on the dead fish head way about the width of his head, and streched from the opening of his mouth up to around about where his eyes were.

I dont have any snails, but do have 2 small Sucker fish I forgot to mention, they dont come from behind the plants very often so I dont see much of them and often forget that they are there.

It might be a koi herpes virus or whatever it's called, you need to improve the water quality and it'll go away eventurely.

Or

Columnaris, which it starts near mouths and fins mostly, it's a whitespot followed by a see-thru line(it's deadly could paralys your fish and even death)

Thanks for that, how would you recomend inproving the water quality? Do i need to do a big water change, or would i be better off doing a lot of small ones?

Also here are some photos

The Wite Spots

Black Marks on head

Black Marks on head

Those white spots looks exactly like the spots my black moor has.I have done almost everything possible but they won't go away :angry:

Wow, take it easy, PodgyGoldy. KHV is just about the worst thing you can wish on anyone and it is 80% fatal to the whole fish population with complete sterilization and disposal of all fish stock the only course of action in most cases. There is no cure and improving waterQ is going to do nothing for KHV.

Tom, your water qaulity figures are not horrible but it is more indicative of some underlying problem. Is your filter dimensioned to handle the fish load and the tank size? If it is dimensioned correctly then your NH4 and nitrIte should indeed be zero. A little bit of both tends to indicate that the filter is not catching up with the waste generated. Please investigate further.

Usually black patch on a fish is associated with healing. Possibly from ammonia burns. I don't know if it is true in your case though. Need to look into it a bit more and certainly a pic will help.

The white spot, can you have a really close look? Does it look like a little ball of cottonwool? Can you see any hair like strands come out from the centre. PG is may be onto something here, it can be columnaris or it can be saprolegnia or common water mould.

Oh sorry, i thought them waxy spots(scar tissue, small non-threatening viral infections?) are called KHV, my brain is not with me right now :angry:

Oops, more posts came in while I was typing so missed your pics.

What is your water temp at the moment, Tom? If it is quite low, it could be carp pox which is a type of virus and maybe that is what PG was thinking of. There is generally no cure, warmer water and maybe a little bit of salt can see it disappear only to reappear when the water temp drops again.

The black patch, do they look like they are sitting on the of the scales like a growth or actually integral to the scale. It does open the possibility of a pegment change but I still think that it might be healing marks from ammonia burn. Did anything happened to your filter which might have caused a sudden spike in ammonia?

I've had quite a goot look at the white spots, doesn't really look like cotton wool, and I cant see any hair coming from it. I think the best way to describe them would be like grains of salt, but they seem to be under the skin thather than on top of it.

My temp at the mo is about 70. The black patch seems to be integral with the scales. The only thing I can think that might have caused a sudden spike of amonia is that when I was having problems with really cloudy water I was told by someone in a local pet shop to leave the filter run and not clean it untill it stopped working because it was so full of muck. So I did, suppose that could have caused it

The black markings are signs of healing not a diesease, and your fish is orange so it's more likely to have black marks...

Yeah, the your pics reminded me of carp pox but they should be above the scale as they are in actual fact, a built up of dead white cells and should look hard and waxy.

I can't see the logic of that advice from the petshop employee (not the first time! ). The fact is that the nitrifying bacterias in your filter needs a good flow of oxygen rich water to thrive. Running the filter until it clugs up will just kill all your good bacterias and create the perfect environment for nasty aeronomas which are bad news in any tank.

Did you test your water during that period? I would expect your filter to be nuked and you effectively underwent another cycle and that can indeed cause ammonia spike and nitrIte spike as well. Maybe that is also why your ammonia and nitrIte is still not zero as the filter hasn't fully recover yet.

Yes that's what i meant Carp Pox i remebered it now

I thought so but I wasn't sure before. When in doubt, don't quote a name, it is safer that way.

so what do you think is the best plan of action now? Should I don a big water change, or a lot of small ones over the next few weeks? Also, how often should I clean the filter, should I do this weekly when I do a small water change?

BTW thanks for all the help so far, I really appreciate it

I think you should do weekly water changes based on your water paras readings...

Don't mean to sound stuipd but, what are the water paras readings, and how do I use them to inprove my water quality?

Tom, water parameter readings are the ammonia/nitrite/nitrate/pH readings that come from water testiing. When you test the water, the results are called "readings".
Do you have test kits yourself, or do you have it tested at the petstore? Since the whole thing looks more like a water quality issue, investing test kits for ammonia, nitrite, nitrate and pH would be a good thing at the moment. The best and cheapest are the drop test kits from AquariumPharmaceuticals, where you drop a certain amount of test solution into a provided glass of tank water, and the solution causes the water to change. That colored glass you will hold up to a provided chart, and you can read right off how high/low your ammonia/nitrites/nitrates/pH are.
What I would do is indeed for more frequent water changes, depending on how high your ammonia and nitrites are at the moment. Twice a week should be sufficient right now, and keep testing the water daily. If those two (ammonia/nitrite) should rise any further, more water changes are in order.
Adding either aquarium, solar or rock salt to the tank also is helpful, especially with higher nitrites. The salt will prevent any gill damage to the fish rom the higher nitrites. One tablespoon per 5 gl of water is the recommended dosage. When doing a waterchange, you only need to add enough salt for the amount of water you are changing, not the whole tank volume. Lets say you take out 30 gl of water and replace it with new water, you need to add 6 tablespoons of salt to the added water.
As for the filter capacity, I would recommend you look into adding another filter to your setup. Its recommended that you have a filter capacity of 10x the tank volume, so with roughly 90 gl of water you filter should handle water of 900 gl/hour. I am not sure how much the Fluval4o4 will do in an hour, but it's for sure not 900 gl. A good quality addition of a filter would be the biggest Aquaclear, it hangs on the back of the tank. Sorry, they recently changed the names of the Aquaclear, but it used to be the Aquaclear 500...I think its called Aquaclear 110 now... He does close to 500gl/hour, and together with your Fluval that should roughly bring it up to 900 gl/hour.
Aquaclear are easy to clean, hold a large amount of filter media and hardly ever die on you. My oldest one runs for around 5 years now, and so far no problems whatsoever.
Ooops, that turned out to be a big post.... Feel free to ask away with anything that seems a bit confusing....

Excellent advice from Andrea.

Yeah, you readings are abnormal but not totally bad. Regular partial water change is the way to go. Keep testing the water and you want to see ammonia and nitrIte at zero. Let's hope that your filter will catch up soon or add more filtration as Andrea suggested.

Will try that then, lots of little water changes. I have bought amonia, nitrite and pH tests now so I can keep an eye on how things are developing.

Also, I've done a little research on my filter, and on the manufacturers website it said it was capable of around 216 uk gal/hr but I thought that this was quite low, so having done a little more research I remembered that my tank is actually 4' x 1' x 1.5' and so is actually around 50 US Galons. Does this mean my tank is overcrowded? I am now thinking about buying a new filter, what would you recomend, getting another similar to the one I have already got, or getting rid of the one I have and buying an external one capable of filtering larger amounts per hour?

Technically, you are over stocked. 8 GF is too much for a 50gal. If you have super filtering and work real hard to keep the water pristine, you can get away with it for a little while longer as long as the 5 little goldies are small. Over time, they will all grow larger and larger and you will be in bigger trouble. That may well be why your water readings are not quite right. You filter can cope with the fish load.

If you are planning to buy another filter then I would suggest that you buy one to suppliment the one you have and don't touch the old one. This way you don't have to cycle your tank, the old filter will provide a steady supply of good bacteria to seed the new one. The load on the old will be reduced over time and it will work better. A win-win situation.

It looks like ammonia burn that is healing.

Keep up with water changes!!!