Two weeks ago Sox, my big black oranda, had her wen pecked by my little lionhead and she had a couple of small red raw wounds.

So I swapped her out of the tank. The wounds have been taking ages to heal, but they don't seem to have gotten infected. No fungus or any other sign. Just stayed raw and open until about two days ago when they started going white (which I took to be scar tissue forming). All the while i was dosing with Myxazin anyway to prevent infections.

Well, anyway, today I noticed her poop was all white and empty (so I assume she has an infection), but just twenty minutes ago there was whole pile of poop on the bottom of the tank and it was full of blood. I did a 50% water change about three hours ago. She otherwise seems okay, if a bit more quiet than her usual boisterous self.

The only time I've ever seen this before was with my other oranda Matchstick about two months ago, and I found her dead the next morning before I could do anything!! So my heart just sank when I saw it again. I'm extremely anxious now! So please tell me if you know what this could be and if there's anything I can do before it's too late!

If it's a serious bacterial infection, I'm afraid there won't be much I can do as the only antibiotic we have here is tetracyclene which always seems to be useless. But I've put some in her tank anyway, more out of hope than anything...

I think this really this is a bad sign. I don't think I can handle losing her as well so soon after Frostbite.

Please help!!

http://www.mu.edu/~buxtoni/puregold/diseas...agnosis_by_poop

So sorry to hear about this. As Sandy has linked you too, it isn't a good thing to have happen.

When my Squirt had egg impaction she had bloody diarrhea and within hours Septicimia and died by the that afternoon. It was a fast hitting thing.

I would say to keep her/him as comfortable as you can and hope for the best. But I don't think a fish usually recovers once the body starts expelling blood.

Thanks for the link Sandy. It mentions blood, but only as part of diarrhea. Sox doesn't have diarrhea. The poop is encased like normal poop, except it's got lts of blood in it. And it came out all at once, a lot of it like she was expelling her entire intestinal tract, so it was sitting in a pile on the bottom, which is why I noticed it straight away.

I can't find any info about anything that matches this symptom anywhere. But as I said, I have seen it before, just recently with Matchstick. And she was gone before morning.

So I guess you're right Laurie. Internal bleeding of any kind is a very, very bad sign, so I guess all I can do is pray.

These last few weeks have just been an absolute nightmare and it's just getting worse..

ive been looking around and all i can find that mentions blood is enteritis or a viral infection but other than that theres not that much. no treatment i'm afraid, i'm really, really sorry

Thanks for helping Sandy.

It's almost 6am here and I've been watching her all night. I've just been too afraid to do it all night because it might be the last time, but I think I'll just switch her light off now and get some rest.

I really hope someone can think or find something that will help. I'm still looking for you just in case ive missed anything. Its really nice to read that you have stayed up all night with her and i hope that she will still be with you later. please keep us updated.

Hi, The same exact thing happened to my red ryukin a 3 days ago. Unfortunately she died within 8 hours of this happening. I am so sorry and hope your outcome is better than mine. I suspect some sort of infection that attacked her internal organs and caused widespread organ failure. Good Luck to you.

Oh, no, Awrieger, not your black oranda! Even if you could get your hands on Metromed or Medigold, I don't think it would make it to you on time from Goldfishconnection. So, I was thinking - could you soak Sox's regular food in the Tetracycline, maybe deluted in some water, so its not the whole strength? Getting it into him via food is the fastest way to do it, antibacterial water treatments take longer to take effect, since the fish doesn't really absorb it through its skin.
I hope you have some positive news in the morning...

Hey man,

i just read your post and i know what your going through. something happened to my ranchu and i was devastated. best of luck to you and your fishy!!!


-Lam

Well, Sox is still with me today. I'm so relieved, but she's a lot stronger fish than Matchstick ever was so maybe she's just putting up a longer fight. Or maybe the Tetracyclene tablets have helped. She looks okay from all external appearances. A bit quieter than she usually is, but still swimming about the middle of the tank (but then so was Matchstick so I'm not getting too much hope up on that).

There were more bloody poops on the floor again today. Smaller and not so many as last night. And one she just did was bright red in the first half, but a lot darker in the second half. This suggests the blood is clotting before it's coming out. Or the bleeding is now occurring further up the intestine.

There's really nothing I can do except add new dose of tetracyclene to the water after a water change.

Andrea, thanks for the suggestion. The tetracyclene is in a tablet form which you just drop into the tank (I had to add 6 tablets) and it breaks apart into a white powder covering the whole floor like snow. Sox has actually stirred it up so some has settled on her wen just like snow (which will be good for her little wounds there I guess). So the fish do swallow a fair bit of it, because whenever I've used it before, they always start pooping white poop from the powder. I'm just hoping Sox will too soon.

Thanks Sandy, I appreciate you doing that.

Vivamax, I'm so sorry to hear the same thing happened to your ryukin. Whereabouts in the world are you? I'm thinking maybe this is unique to Australia or this part of the world which is why I can't find any info. Also, was your fish definitely a female? Matchstick was too. So is Sox. Maybe it's related to eggs or something.

Lam, sorry to hear bout your fish too, and thanks for the well wishes.

I hope Sox recovers for you. She may even have swallowed something that has lodged and irritated her bowels. Maybe she will pass it eventually.

I'm pleased she has made it to another day. i have my fingers crossed for you both, which makes typing not very easy.
i couldnt find anything else on intestinal bleeding i'm afraid, so its down to sox now and hoping someone has a cure for you.
wishing you all the luck in the world.

Good luck, AW! Fingers crossed.

Hang in there, you are doing such a good job. It is so sweet of you to stay up with her, you are a special person to care for her so.
I am saying a prayer for you and her.

Thanks everyone.

Sox passed away around 2pm today, Sunday. About three hours ago. Just stopped breathing and rolled on her side like she was going to sleep and started drifting gently through the water.

Both of my two biggest beautiful fish dead within days of each other.

This ammonia I've just discovered they've decided to add to my tapwater has wreaked utter devastation on all four of my goldie tanks over the past month. Frostbite dead. Sox dead. Kennedy on his side. Lucy on her side. Bumpy bad gill damage. Big Red lost some scales... But apart from Lucy and Kennedy who are in pretty bad shape, I think the rest should recover okay now that I've found the cause of it all.

My main tank, last month's famed 'tank of the month', is completely empty now. Nothing in it at all. Just the water. As empty as I feel inside myself right now to be honest.

At the moment, I don't know if I'll get more goldfish. I can't go through this again. Maybe I'll just put tropicals or something in there. It doesn't hurt so much when you lose a tiny tetra...

So sorry about Sox, Angie. I hope Lucy and Kennedy pull through without further complications.

I recognise the empty feeling you're referring to and I empathise and sympathise with you. You are in my thoughts. Best wishes.

I'm so very sorry aw - my thoughts are with you also

Thanks Annette and Jen.

Annette, it's all clear in hindsight now. Remember me complaining two weeks ago about struggling with the ammonia building up in Lucy's hospital tank? Every time she seemed to be recovering, she just took another turn for the worse with the high ammonia? Well, it's been me adding it!

And I also remember now that it was only after me doing a water change straight after moving her originally when she was already a bit stressed was when she fell on her side in the first place. She was just sitting on the bottom before that.

I don't know if all the time that's passed has made the damage permanent. Maybe I can still help her and Kennedy. I'll try at least anyway. I have the empty main tank now to set up as Kennedy's own private hospital tank.

PS. Actually, maybe even my Black Moor.... it was about the same time, just before Lucy got affected...

If you were using Prime with your tap water the ammonia would have been detoxed. Provided your ammonia readings were under .6ppm it should all have been harmless stuff. Your situation would be similar to when I'm cycling. I use Prime, the ammonia readings are still there but my fish are not effected by it.

Unless I'm missing something, I don't think ammonia is your culprit. Sometimes we never know and it is extremely frustrating. Just look at the situation Coyote Ugly is going through right now. Nobody has a clue what's happening.

edit: just for the record, my fish are never happy if I do a water change larger than 40%. They definately act strange for a day, maybe two. I just put it down to the stress of the changes. Like I said before, so much going on, it's hard to tell. For example, what if your last floaty fish (was it Lucy?) actually had some pathegon or something that was causing her floaty problems? Perhaps it wasn't killed by the various treatments and infected other fish?

oh no! i'm so sorry you lost her. I too dont think ammonia is the culprit here as i wouldnt have thought ammonia would cause internal haemorrhaging(sp). I thought it was a viral disease, but either way, we wont know for sure. What ammonia level were you getting from your tap water?
Once again, i'm really sorry.

I'm terribly sorry too, AW. It must be totally devastating.

I have to agree with Annette though. If you use dechlor to treat the tap water you shouldn't need to worry about chloramine. In anycase, a mature biofilter should be able to handle the excess ammonia unless it is a huge jump. I don't mean to nitpick but just don't quite see how chloramine in the tap water can be so devastating to your fish. I live in Sydney and I just use any old tap water conditioner before a water change.

Thanks Sandy. I don't think the ammonia killed her. I'm just thinking it's the chronic non-lethal exposure to it over a few weeks which weakened her immune system so this bug, whatever it was, could take a hold. It was a very unpleasant experience watching an otherwise normal and healthy looking animal, knowing and just waiting for her to die from something inside her that I couldn't do anything about. I definitely don't want to go through that again.

Annette, I understand what you're saying. I had a look at Seachem's website on the Prime FAQ. The Prime 'binds' to the ammonia to detoxify it. The Kent Marine label says it does the same thing.

The Seachem FAQ does say 'salicylate' tests like our Aquarium Pharmaceuticals ones, you should take the measurement straight away because the five minute wait is long enough to break the Prime/ammonia bond, 'eventually giving a false reading of ammonia'. Which I take to mean it should read no ammonia at first, but then slowly turns green. But my post-Prime tests yesterday turned green immediately. I didn't even need to wait 10 seconds, let alone 5 minutes.

I did a quick test with 3 drops of Prime in 5ml test sample of tapwater (a large overdose of Prime!) so I can see for sure if the ammonia still registers even when it's 100% detoxified as you suggest. On the left is with the 3 drops of Prime. On the right is fresh tapwater:



No ammonia registering with the Prime'd sample, so it's definitely detoxed. Granted, 3 drops per 5mls is much, much more than the instructions say or what I was dosing yesterday, but I wasn't getting anything near like this yesterday, even with as much as 5mls per 25 litres. Just pure green from the outset.

It took 5mls of Kent Marine 'Ammonia-Detox' in 25 litres to register a yellow colour. As it's about 70% stronger than Prime, I guess the equivalent amount of Prime needed would be about 9mls per 25 litres. About 35 times the instructions!

I'm concluding I now have 0.5 - 0.7ppm of pure ammonia in my tapwater, as well as an extremely high amount of chloramines which I think Prime breaks down into ammonia, which is what I'm still reading after adding Prime. Or maybe I'm even reading the original 0.5 ammonia all along, while the Prime is being used up on all the chloirine and chloramines instead. I don't know enough about it. If I'm wrong, please tell me, as these ammonia detoxifiers are very expensive!


PS. I've always had the opposite experience, Annette. With the exception of the last few weeks (which has been the exact opposite), my fish always seem to perk up dramatically after a large water change. Even today when I did a 60% change (now I'm using Kent Marine Ammonia-Detox, so no ammonia!), Bumpy came to life, zipping about the tank like his old usual boisterous little self. Which I'm very happy to see!

You have raised an interesting point, is this what you mean -

Sample of tap water shows 1pmm ammonia but as the Prime breaks down the chloramines (depending on their levels) more ammonia is released into the water, and the Prime is not able to deal with it?

Gee, that is very plausible. If I suspected that were the case I would use double Prime dosage, it says it is safe up to x6 regular dose.

This is soooo complicated. Maybe dataguru would be able to shed some light on the situation.

Thanks Captk. Apparently the filters *were* handling the excess ammonia because I started testing high nitrites in the tanks. But I didn't know why. I wrongly guessed I didn't clean my Purigen properly and it killed the nitrating bacteria in my filter. So I compounded the problem trying to fix the wrong thing.

Because he's a white fish, it was only Bumpy's purple/brown gills which alerted me that it was a nitrite problem. I couldn't see it on the others.

I was adding Prime to my water changes as per the instructions (a little more actually as I always like to be on the safe side just in case), so maybe the ammonia *was* detoxified and harmless, and it was only the resulting high nitrites which caused all the damage.

But then, it was only the turns for the worse taken by both Frostbite and Sox in their separate tanks immediately after their water changes which alerted me to the ammonia levels in the tapwater. My fish were reacting badly to the water changes. Detoxified ammonia shouldn't have any affect at all like that, should it?

Acually, I'm holding it in the wrong place. Trying to operate a camera with one hand! It's actually closer to 0.5ppm.

But what you've said there is pretty much what I'm thinking. I must have a very large amount of chloramine. From what I can go0gle, chloramine is 5:1 chlorine to ammonia ratio.

I just don't know enough about it.

im so sorry for your loss

Thanks Lillypetal.

Wow, Awrieger, that isn't exactly the outcome I was hoping for when I came back to your thread... I am sorry that Sox didn't make it, I wished she would get better.
Is your ammonia from the tab always there, or only to certain times? I have been wondering if your city adds some extra at times, and doesn't announce it. Every change towards the higher end they are required to announce beforehand here in the US, like adding more chlorine to clean out city water pipes and such. Too many aquarium and pet stores could have enormous damage if they wouldn't know ahead of time whats coming, and a friend of mine years ago lost most of his fish because of him either missing the announcement or the city neglecting to do so.

I don't know if you can do that in Australia, but here you can request an anual report from the city water management of what exactly they put into your water.
Again, so sorry about Sox.....

Thanks Andrea.

It's possible they did notify and I missed it, because my lfs seemed to be doing business as usual when I went in there this week. I'll have to ask them next time I'm in there. But I doubt anyway if they do as frequent or as much water changes as I was doing these past few weeks (up to 50% a day) so it wouldn't have affected them as much as it did me anyway. I'm just thinking that if I *didn't* do all those frequent water changes, my fish would still be okay...

It seems it's only recent and only in my area though, not the whole city, so maybe they just dosed our local water tower/storage thingie after testing it and finding some bugs.

It's supposed to be zero, and it was when I tested my tap back in January. Tested pure yellow, zero ammonia. I know people here are telling me that the Prime should have neutralised it anyway, but it just didn't...

I'm utterly crushed and miserable. The two biggest and best fish I ever had, and I couldn't even keep them for 6 months. You know I take a lot of pictures of my fish... I can't look at any of them now without getting a knot and empty hollow feeling in my stomach.

Oh!!!! I'm so sorry to read all this! I'm sorry for your losses - too many at once...

From what I understand, Prime also treats chloramines...

I live in a place with some (if not the most) famously bad water in all of America. I recently switched to tap water because of the size of the new tank and I am still fretting about it! We have elevated levels of chlorine and triple does of chloramines - due to a recent E.Coli outbreak - and who knows what else (they just "flushed" the system so added even more chlorine than usual double high doses. Prime should be taking care of this - and I double dose it - but I am not certain of just how good of a job it does, specifically re: cumulative effects.
I have been more worried about the chronic effects of heavy metals...

The Dept. of Health puts out a notification whenever they are doing something "bad" to the water - of course, the notifications, if they arrive, come two months after the event! But, they have a website now that I actually check regulalry. They even have warnings about pets now - bu tonly on the website.

I don't know how things are in Australia but does your Dept. of Health or public works have a website? We have been notified becasue the city is being sued (multiple cases) by the EPA so the public awareness has been a big issue.

Unfortunately, I have found in my research that when levels do not exceed certain values (based on affect on humans) - they do not have to report it! Why would they want to tell everyone that a bacteria is in the water when they can just dose it? If it goes away, no harm done - that' s how they see it.

Could you test the water before each water change? To check for changes in the tap water? I know, that's quite a chore - but, maybe the city is the culprit. I would really go to someone's office and try to find out what is going on and why citzens are not being notified.

Do you know if other people in the neighborhood are experiencing the same?

My thoughts are with you