my goldfish is around 5 yrs old and usually very healthy and lively we went away on holiday and before we went we purchased a pyramid looking feeder from the pet shop to feed the fish while we were away when we arrived home the fish is now kinda bent in half he doesnt seem to be able to get straight, can fish break bones? does anyone know what is wrong with my fish? has anyone seen or heard of this before? what can i do to help it? is there anything i can do??? please help its my childrens fish and they love it to bits im at a loss at what to do
any info greatly appreciated thank you.

Hi mytwins and

I'm sorry you're having problems

There's a white box at the top of the thread with questions. It'd be an enormous help if you could answer as many of the questions as possible otherwise trying to guess becomes virtually impossible.

It could be water quality issues as some fish have been known to bend over with extremely high amounts of ammonia, nitrites and even high nitrates.

So if you can, please post back as much info on your tank as possible to help eliminate whether it's a problem with the water

Hi mytwins,

Welcome to koko's.

Please answer the questions suggested by Jen.

Do you have any submerged filter, pump or heater? Are any of them protected by ground fault protection?

If you don't have any water test kits at home you can take a water sample to your petstore and they usually test it for free (just another way to get you in the front door, I think ) In particular we would like to know pH, ammonia, nitrIte and nitrAte readings. Please ask them to write down the actual readings rather than just saying 'normal', 'bad', etc.

It seems obvious that your fish's condition is connected to your absence (how long were you away?) and the 2 things that changed were a lack of water changes and the food block. Depending on the size of your tank the food block could have polluted your water and turned it toxic in a short time. Toxic water and/or severe constipation (from overeating?) are possible causes.

In the meantime, try changing 50% of the tank water. Also try fasting your fish for 2 days then feed it a couple of peas. Boil the peas until soft then pop them out of the outer shell. Cut into bite size pieces and feed to fish. This helps with constipation.

Hi and welcome to Kokos,
Immediately do what Annette suggested--a major water change (50% only, don't change all of it) and fasting for a day or two then feed peas.

It sounds to me like the pyramid feeder polluted the tank--those feeders are not worth the trouble.

When I found this website 2 years ago, I had the same problem with an eight year old goldfish--I had cleaned the gravel with a siphon for the first time and stirred up some awful bacteria that were festering in it. My fish was bent exactly like that and unfortunately it was too late by the time I tried to help him.

The "bent" spine in the goldfish is a serious thing and I believe that fasting the fish and cleaner water should help as long as it is done in a timely fashion.


Good luck!