hi! i had bought 2 redcap goldfish last month....they were doing fine until today i noticed some kind of worm on them. i checked out the info from the net & most probably they are not anchor worms but fish lice. i want to know how to treat them & how long will it take to get rid of them.they have small white spots also on them & they are not swimming also...they just hang in one corner with each other.
pls help!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

pls help.........my redcap goldfish which i bot abt 3 weeks back have got fish lice. they are small transparent insects which are roaming on their body. my fish also are not swimming properly....they just hang in one corner & have got white spots on their body.
pls help..............

Hi Shaggyk, and !
On the top of this section, there is a big red box - if you can please answer as many as you possible can of the questions in there, that gives us a much better picture of your setup and fish.
Right now, it could very easily be that your new fish brought those lice home with him from the store - a very common parasite in a lot of fish stores. Those buggers not only irritate the fish's skin with their bites, they also can leave open areas for bacteria to get a hold of, and that is a nasty thing.
So, if you have the courage, grab a few supplies - a pair of tweezers, and any anti bacterial ointment like Neosporin, and have them ready on your tank. Then hold your fish gentle yet firm in your hand (if you are left handed, hold him in your right hand, and vice versa), and pull the fish lice off with the tweezers. If they already left a red mark on the fish, apply a small dap of neosporin. Make sure you hold the fish either over your tank, or over a bucket of tank water - in case the fish wiggles loose, you don't wonna have him land on the floor.
That's the first, yet important step - freeing the fish of the parasites. Of course, there can and will be invisible eggs of those parasites in your tank, so the best would be to get a medication called "parasite clear" from Jungle. It is inexpensive, and has an erray of medication for quite a number of parasites, including fish lice. It is gentle on the fish, and the beneficial bacteria in the filter. I even have seen that medication at Walmart, and most pet stores.
As to those white spots, how exactly do they look? More fluffy, like cotton, or tiny little spots, like your fish got sprinkled with salt? I can imagine the spots are kind of hard to see on an almost all white fish.

Post back soon, and discribe the spots a bit more in detail....

thanks for ur help....those spots look like salt grains.
and abt the setup pf my tank...well actually its a bowl which has 2 redcap gold fish in it. i change the water after abt 10 days...the whole of it...thats wat the storekeeper told me. im sorry i dont noe the technical details of the water content.
abt the lice.....what if i cant do it manually...i mean i feel scared holding the fish....what if it i take too much time to take of the lice & the fish dies???
iv used salt treatment & a medicine which is more of general remedy...wont it kill the lice of my fish??
pls help again!!!!!!!!!!

hi &

this is link to fish lice info: http://www.kokosgoldfish.invisionzone.com/...showtopic=12848

i dont know much about lice/worms - sorry. Good luck.....

Lice or anchorworm are not my areas either. But if you can answer all the questions above I am sure someone will be along to help.

I have combined your two posts, so its easier for everybody to follow up without getting confused....

If you are too scared to hold your goldfish, that is okay. As long as there aren't a gazillion lice on the fish, in which case its definetely a must to take them off manually. Otherwise the "Parasite Clear" will do its job just fine.
Although I have to say that unfortunately a bowl is not a recommended housing for one goldfish, and definetely not two. They are enormous waste producers, and ideally should have 10 gl per fish for them. Otherwise the water polutes so fast, that you have to do at least daily 100 % water changes to keep up with everything, and that is a lot of work.
Besides the fact that the lice might have come in with the newly aquired fish, the ich sounds like something that might have come to the surface because of issues with water quality.
Here are some useful links for you to understand whats going on in your water more easily, and what accumulating waste can cause.
Cycle of a tank

Some info on what the basic needs are for a happy and healthy goldfish....
10 steps to a healthy goldfish
... and some interesting reading material bowl vs. tank....
Bowl vs. tank

Unfortunately, a lot of pet store employees use the general rule that applies to tropical fish to goldfish as well, which is fatal in a lot of cases. Tropicals are so much smaller than goldfish, therefore don't produce much waste. In addition to fish poop, with every breath a fish takes it expels ammonia. Now, can you imagine the breath of a little tropical to the one of a fully grown goldfish?

Feel free to ask away whatever you don't understand, we are all here to help, and the first steps are always the hardest....

thanks for ur help.......iv returned my goldfish to the store for better keeping. iv got a siamese fighter & two mickey mouse platy instead. hope they do fine....any suggestions on how to keep them healthy will be greatly appreciated.
thanks again.

The betta (siamese fighter) will be fine in the bowl, just do 100% water changes once a week.

The mickey mouse platys, however, are tropical fish that need to be in a tank. They will not live long in a bowl. might want to bring them back, too.