Much thanks for any help or advice on my latest goldfish problem. I have a pair of baby orandas, each about 2 inches long in the body, which I have had for 4 months now. It has been a nightmare, basically, with one problem after another: problems with cycling the tank, with ich, then a mystery disease that involved a lot of bottom-sitting and heavy breathing, which I thought was probably blood poisoning or gill damage from all the cycling problems I had been having.

The fish made it through all this, thankfully, but now one of them, the smaller one (Tangerine) has developed a new problem. For a while he started to swim awkwardly, sometimes rolling over on his side, and sometimes completely flipping over and doing a 360 in the water! We also noticed that he seemed to have trouble going very far down in the tank, or at least he never foraged at the bottom or went more than a few inches below the surface.

We thought it might have been SBD, due to over-feeding or constipation, so we fasted the fish for a few days and fed the fish much less (although we had not been overfeeding them at all before this!). This worked right away- Tangerine stopped swimming strangely, and started poking around at the bottom again after he was fasted and fed less.

Problem solved? Unfortunately not. About 5 days ago he started sitting on the bottom. His fins were erect and he looked fine, but he would just sit there. When I would come home or go over to the tank he would perk up and swim about normally, but after 10 minutes or so he would go back to the bottom and hang out.

I tried not to worry, because perhaps he was just feeling contemplative or resting or something, but it has gotten worse- now he lays on the bottom all of the time, and never swims around. Sometimes it looks like he is trying to get up to the surface, but can never get more than 6 inches or so off the tank bottom. He also sometimes breathes convulsively.

We have them alone in a 20 gallon tank, with under gravel filter only. We have been having lots of problems getting the tank cycled, even though it has been running for 4 months now, due to all sorts of factors. So there have been spikes of ammonia and nitrite every now and then when I get busy and forget to check every few days to do extra water changes or drop in some Amquel+. Also, the pH has had a strange tendency lately to plummet suddenly dropping from a nice 7 to around 5 or below. We have been adding baking soda slowly to buffer this and get the pH back to around 7.

I am SURE that it is not caused by parasites; the tank was salted at 0.3% for 4 weeks about a month and a half ago, due to the ich, and nothing has gone in the tank since except pure water and new gravel, which I washed very thoroughly. The extra gravel was added on a hunch that perhaps the cycling problem is due to having too little gravel or having gravel of too large a diameter- so I added another 10 pounds of finer-sized gravel, which should help boost the bio-filter.

The other fish, Mandarin, is fine, and seems perfectly happy though he often visits Tangerine and seems curious about why he is so abnormally inactive. We are going away for a vacation soon, and hope to have this latest mystery solved before then- any ideas on what this might be? Is it SBD? What can we do! (Tangerine is not eating at all at this point.)

Sorry to hear your fish isn't well.
I moved the thread into the diagnosing area that way it will get the attention it needs.
Also please answer all of the questions at the top in the red box, we will need those answers to help you.

My first thoughts are of course SBD. If a fish does have it, it usually doesn't go away, you have to control it.
Which simply means, you have to keep them on a strick diet/fast routine, keep the nitrates down to around 20 and soak their food.

You can also use gel food to feed them. This helps with keeping the condition under control.

I do have some other thoughts, that being about the ugf. Is that the only filter in the tank? And how often do you vacuum?

Oh the PH conserns me as well. You may need to keep crushed coral in the tank to keep it stable. PH isn't my strong suit, so hopefully someone else can help you get that in line.

Hi Laurie, thanks for the help and for moving my post. Here is a list of specs according to the red box above:

Ammonia level: 0
Nitrite level: 0
Nitrate level: 5
pH level: 7.0
pH out of the tap: something high, above 8.

(these params have been fluctuating a lot lately though, as we have been having problems getting the tank established)

Tank: 20 gals, running for 4 months now.
Filter: under gravel only. (we had a 20 gal size power filter for the first 2 months, which was not providing enough of a biofilter, so we scrapped it to go with the tried and true UGF.)

Water changes: every 5-7 days, 1/3. We thoroughly gravel vac during water changes to remove waste and debris; we also never have excess food, as we feed very sparingly. (which doesn't seem to be helping the SBD symptoms OR the cycling problems, unfortunately.)

Fish: 2 fish in the tank, baby orandas, body length about 2 inches.

Water additives: tap water conditioner to remove metals, amquel to remove chlorine, chloramines, and resulting ammonia. Also amquel+ on occasion when we have a spike of ammonia or nitrite between water changes. Also used a bio-filter weekly additive for the first two months, but quit since it was completely useless. Also adding pure baking soda slowly to buffer pH and keep it around 7.

No medications, though two months ago we had bad ich, as well as a mystery disease, during which we ran a 0.3% salt for 4 weeks as well as a full course of maracyn 2.

No new fish or anything else to the tank over the last 4 months.

We feed them flakes mostly, finely crunched, as well as soaked beta pellets on occasion, and sometimes greens if we have them. (but this is rare)

Slight black edges on fins, due to periodic ammonia spikes. Other than this the only odd behavior for the past month or so has been Tangerine's bottom-sitting, which was preceded by SBD-like swimming symptoms.

These problems, especially the ongoing cycling nightmare, are a mystery to me. I have been keeping fish in Colorado since I was 6, and this is the first time trying to keep fish on the East Coast. With a 20 gal tank, and only two VERY small orandas, there just should not be this much trouble with the nitrogen cycle!! I have tried everything- am starting to feel like this is "The Fish Tank on Elm Street"!

Sorry but the fish tank on Elm st. Comment was funny. I too know that feeling. Hang in there though, we'll help you get it worked out.

Have you tested the water out of the tap? If not I would recommend doing so and if you have could you post those numbers? Thanks.

About the ph, does it drop after a while in the tank. Or do you buffer it to 7.0 from 8.0?

I am not sure if you are aware but ugf don't work well with gf. They root around in the gravel and can stir up toxins that lie beneath.

I think there might be a couple things that the fish is reacting to not just one. The first being SBD and the second being ph problems.
I would fast the fish 2 days and then feed peas for 2 days following that. And start a weekly fast/pea regimon. I would also take precautions to soak the food so it sinks and doesn't float. This will help try and keep the SBD in order.

I will wait to comment on the ph until I have some more info. Hang in there.

Hi again Laurie, and thanks for the advice!

About the pH, we try to keep it buffered to around 7. We had been having no problems with this until recently, when for some reason we seem to have completely lost the ability to buffer the pH. It starts out at around 7 when we do a water change, and then over 5 days or so drops down to 5 or below. That is why we have added baking soda lately, so try to get our buffer back up.

The water out of the tap in the Boston area is AWFUL. In Colorado where I used to live, the water came from a glacier, and you could just pour it into the tank and add a few drops of de-chlor, and that was perfect. Here, it is a toxic soup. Ammonia readings are off the chart, as is the pH. (no nitrite though, or else I would call the city!) They add ammonia and pH increasers and all sorts of other gunk to the water supply. That is why we use so many additives, to take out heavy metals and chloramines and ammonia and to reduce and buffer the pH.

I am pretty aware of the debate surrounding UGF vs power filters... The reason I switched from the power filter (which I had never used before) to the UGF was mainly due to the ongoing problems we had been having in getting a "stupid" bio-filter established!! UGH are great for bio-filters, in my opinion. The power filter I had just didn't seem to have enough surface area to support enough bacteria to do the trick. Because we gravel vac VERY thoroughly every week or so and only have two small fish, we should be fine on mechanical filtration, and I don't think that the tank would have the chance to build up enough gunk to make the UGF go anaerobic and create toxins. (We also have a mixture of small and large gravel to make sure that the UGF has steady water flow and doesn’t get clogged up.)

I would love to start feeding Tangerine chopped cooked peas, but he doesn't seem to want to eat anything right now. Will try though. His abdomen seems to be swelling up, I don't know if this is related to SBD or not.

WEll the belly swelling isn't a good sign. I am not sure how to get that ph right. I do know crushed coral will do the trick, but ph is heavily effected by the hardness of the water. That is where I get confused, so let me see if I can't get another expert here to take a look.

IN the meantime, how long has it been since the fish has eaten anything?

The last time Tangerine ate was when he had two beta pellets, a relatively large meal for him. This was two days ago. Since then he hasn't come up to the surface of the tank or responded at all when we feed the fish, which we try to do once or twice a day.

WEll that isn't a good sign. He should probably eat to keep his strength up to improve his immune system.
Can you force feed him? Cutting the pea into bite size pieces and holding the fish and putting it in his mouth? See if he'll eat that?

Hi. I just thought I would pop in and dump a little bit of information on pH and buffering and gH and kH, here. Perhaps it might help a bit.

Having horrid water is really a sad thing - and, unfortunately, it is not too uncommon around the world. I, too, have very interesting well water - it comes in at a pH of well over 10, with a gH of well over 300. In short - it is so hard that a fish would bounce off the surface if I tossed him in! But, this is still something that can be dealt with, as long as you know what all the water parameters are. Keep in mind, that, even though you are on a municipal water supply, you may or may not get a consistant water. The well water changes considerably during the seasons, as the various water tables drawn from change. The municipal water may well vary too. It is well worth a regular test to find out exactly what you are dealing with in the way of parameters.

That said.... no where do I see what your kH or gH readings are. Do you have a test kit for these? If not, a kH would be very valuable for you to purchase. The gH test is also a fairly good thing to have.

pH and kH are fairly closely tied together. pH is simply a numerical quantification of the number of hydrogen ions that are in a solution. The more ions, more acidic the solution is, and the pH is lower. The less ions available, the more basic the solution and the higher the pH.

pH is fairly important in a few ways - for instance, the nitrifying bacteria that make up your biological filter have a definate pH preference - between 7.5 and 8.6. Certain treatments behave quite differently in different pHs. Chloramine-T is more toxic as the pH of the water goes down. Potassium Permanganate is more toxic in the higher pH readings. Sometimes your water parameters can help dictate the medication to choose for better results.

pH is also said to be linked to various color changes in goldfish. The lower pH are said to keep black fish blacker, and the higher pHs are said to promote orange/yellow/bronzeing.

Now - how is that pH affected? It is directly linked to the kH or carbonate hardness. There are two types of "hardness" that we typically deal with in the goldfish tank - kH or carbonate hardness and gH - or general hardness.

First, gH - or general hardness - refers to the dissolved concentration of mostly magnesium and calcium ions that is in your water. Having an extremely high gH can bother the fish to a degree - it is said to impair the transfer of nutrients and waste products through the fish's cell membranes, affecting growth, efficient organ functions and egg fertility. Most fish, however will adapt quite well to higher gH if it is consistant. So we are not going to be concerned with this.

kH refers to the carbonate or bi-carbonate ions that are in the water. This is the stuff that can be precipitated from the water by boiling (lime scale). Without going into the chemistry of how the kH interacts with the pH and nitrogen cycle of the tank, the kH is what is called your buffer. IF there are lots of available carbonate or bicarbonate ions available in the water, the water is said to be well buffered.

During regular cycling in a tank, excess waster products can produce carbonic acid - which acidifies the water and can lower the pH. If there is sufficiant kH or buffering, the pH is not affected by these swings as the cycles work. I like to describe the way the buffer works as "car shocks". Most people know what a car acts like when it has no shocks. When you go over a bump in the road, the car will bounce up and down and up and down. If the car has good shocks, when you hit a bump, it may thump a tiny bit, but the car will never bounce. A good buffer or kH will behave like a good car shock to your tank. If you hit a bump (acid or base added to the water) the buffer is capable of holding the pH solidly where it is - without any bouncing.

I have a few questions for you....

You say your pH out of the tap is something 8 or greater. How does it get to 7 or lower? Adding baking soda tends to raise the pH along with the kH (buffer) of the tank. Adding baking soda is fine - and will raise your kH (buffer) splendidly, but should not lower the pH.....??????????

I would be very interested to know what your kH actually is. If it is very low, it could very well be that your tank's pH is bouncing. Taking pH readings once a day or so is like looking at an elephant through a tiny pin-hole. You only see a tiny piece and it is hard to see the whole thing. The pH could have swung up and down and up and down numerous times between readings......

Having the pH drop to 5 is horrifying! That needs to be fixed!

Finally, we need to address the issue of a cycle that does not appear to be doing the whole job - for if you have occasional ammonia/nitrite after a water change, then your biological cycle is not up to snuff. A colony of beneficial bacteria, if given proper platform, will easily grow in numbers to handle excess ammonia from a poor water supply as well as the fish waste. The bacteria do not care where the food comes from - they just process it.

I know you like your UGF, and that is fine. It sounds like you know about the pitfalls. But I still question whether there is sufficiant platform for the size of colony you need to support your tank. What gph does your pump pull? I wonder if you would have greater success if you added the HOB filter, properly filled with a good biomedia for the bacteria to colonize. You can never have too much bio media in my book..... This might end the ammonia/nitrite spikes.

Your fish may have some problems unrelated to the pH, kH and filtering issues, but I also strongly feel that 99.9% of all SBD symptoms are either caused by or greatly influenced by water parameters that are less that what that particular fish may need. Fish from poor quality store tanks, fish that have suffered accidents, fish that have been shipped inproperly, etc. can all have sensitivities to water parameters that may or may not affect others in the same tank. For that matter, a female fish can have problems that a male fish will not.

I am sorry this is so long..... perhaps it will help a bit. knowing your kH might be very helpful....

Hi daryl and laurie,

Thanks for your help and advice. Tangerine's condition worsened very quickly. I tried feeding him peas by hand, which worked for a day, but after that he was unable to eat and died shortly after. It was sad, especially after nursing him through a bad ich infection a few months ago. He was the runt of the tank at the Chinatown fish store, so perhaps whatever he had was congenital- I guess with goldfish you never know! At least we gave him the best chance we could.

Thanks to daryl for all the information about pH and kH. You are right, we don't know what our kH is, as we don't have a kH kit. I had never heard of measuring kH before, because in the Colorado town where I used to live no one ever has a problem with water quality! I have since earned that the water in my old town is perfect for fish- neutral pH with a high kH right out of the tap.

The way we lower the pH from the tap before we put it into the tank is by adding "pH down" drops from an aqua pharm-brand pH testing and changing kit. We usually have to add quite a few drops (as many as 20) to every 2 gallons of water to get the pH down to about 7. We test the pH in every batch of water when doing water changes to make sure it matches what is in the tank at the moment.

When the pH in the tank gets too low, we try to add baking soda to bring it up, hopefully also buffering it a bit more. But we will go out and get a kH test kit to see what is really going on!

I think that what you said about the nitrifying bacteria having a Ph range is very useful information- that could explain why we seem to keep gaining a good bio-filter, and then losing it again over time. The pH swings in our tank from inadequate kH could be the culprit I have been searching for all these months!

About the UGF, with 20 gallons and only one small fish (now that Tangerine is gone...) about 2-inches long, that is NOT being overfed, I am 100% sure that our biofilter should be adequate to process whatever waste products our little guy can produce! When Mandarin (our survivor) gets bigger, we will probably have to get additional filtering power.

Thanks again for all your help.

one more question to daryl about kH- can it be too high? and what is a good number to be at? (we are leaving for vacation in a few days, so we want to make sure our tank is very well-buffered before we go!)

thanks again for your help

I am sorry to hear he didn't make it.
Hopefully Daryl can get you that info and you'll be all set.
Good luck to you.

I am very sorry to hear about Tangerine.

kH, I suppose, can possibly be considered to be "too high", but that is mostly a worry I do not think most would ever need to be concerned with. The worst and most common problem you would run into with a high kH is that the tank will be so buffered that it is impossible to budge the pH at all - no matter what additives you select for the process. This is not necessarily all bad - unless your pH is really out of whack.

You want your kH to be somewhere above 4.5dH or 80ppm. I would aim more at about 100ish. Higher than that will not hurt. Having a pH of "higher than 8" most likely is not going to hurt at all. A pH of 8.6-8.7 is still well within the range of normal and good for goldfish. The biggest concern is that you want that pH to be consistant - not go up and down at all. The changing pH is very stressful to the fish. They can tolerate very high readings, but not the changes. This said - to take your pH back up to meet that tap readings, you will need to do it very slowly over time so you do not stress your fish.

I think, that unless your pH is well into the 9s, I would keep it just as it comes from the tap. Trying to aim at a pH of 7.0 is really not worth the work, and, if in the doing, you set your tank up for a precipitous pH drop, you could seriously affect the fish. Make sure you have enough kH or buffer to get it at least 80ppm and the whole tank's water system should be able to remain solidly where it is, even in the presence of a strong nitrogen cycle. It should not drop even if unattended for a long vacation time.

Hapy vacation!

Thanks Daryl!!! I too hope you have a good vacation.

Ok! Thanks for your help. So far we have not been able to find a kH test kit in any of the three pet stores in our area (petco, petsmart, and a small independent store), which is frustrating. In the event that we can't test our kH before we leave, we will just keep adding baking soda, slowly, at about 1/8 teaspoon per day. This is slowly raising our pH up to what comes out of the tap, and should hopefully give us a high enough buffer to withstand the vacation!

We also invested in a pretty expensive automatic feeder machine as well, instead of going for the more dubious 10-day dissolving shells or pyramids or treasure chests or whatnot.

So I'm pretty confident about the vacation and our remaining fish! Thanks again for all your help. Happy holidays!

Hi i read about feeding fish peas but how do you go about it? just cut a garden pea into small pieces then feed it the fish?
does it need to be washed? frozen?

sorry for my noob questions lol i too have this same problem

I will answer this here, so you will find it. But in the future, to prevent any accidental missed questions, just go ahead and start a new thread for a question, Dico. There is no question that is not a good one if it is an honest concern! We are HAPPY to talk goldfish about ANYTHING!

Peas are typically purchased as frozen peas. Since the freezing process requires that the vegetables are "blanched" which means heating them to the boiling point for a specific short time (different time for each vegetable), they can be considered "cooked" already. So you can simply thaw them if you wish, to use them. I like to heat them some, though.

I usually drop the number of peas I wish to feed into a small glass condiment bowl, add about a tablespoon of water and nuke them for 15-20 seconds in the microwave. When they come out, I drain them, skin them (pop the peas out of their shells - just pinch each pea a bit and squeeze - they come right out!), and feed them to thefish. If the fish is very small, you may have to cut the pea in sections. Sometimes you will get a pea that is very hard even after heating. I discard these. Sometimes they are so soft you cannot pick them up without squishing them - I discard these, too.

If your fish is flipped, you can often feed a pea by placing it in the fish's mouth. If they do not like that, you can turn the fish right side up and "drive" them down to the bottom of the tank to the peas to eat. Most like this. At last ditch attempt, you can pass the peas through a sieve with a little of the water they were cooked in and use a plastic syringe to squirt it into the fish.

Try tucking a little grain of epsom salt into a pea piece and it will help end the fish's constipation even more quickly!