Hi all,

I am new to this message board. It seem like a great place with tons of great information. I have a 20 gallon tank with 2 goldfish (2 orandas) and 1 of the fish is sick. He is lying on the bottom a lot and he's inactive. Also, he is opening his mouth a lot and looks like he is gasping (sp) for air. I just added some aquarium salt to the tank to help with the breathing.

Here are the current tank readings:

20 gallon tank (running for 6-7 months approximately)
Tank Temp = 75 degrees
ph = 7.2
nitrate = 20-30
nitrite = 0.2
Ammonia = 0

He's not eating very much. He ate a little yesterday, but today he is just lying on the bottom opening his mouth really wide. He does swim around the tank every so often, but you can see that he struggling. Any ideas or help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

If you can take a look and see if theres anything in the mouth since his mouth is open.....

When did this start and how long have you had this tank and fish

It started maybe about 2 days ago. At first he was swimming fine and even eating but his mouth was wide open. He's opening it and closing it a lot. He will try to swim and then will stop swimming after 5 or 10 seconds. I don't believe anything is stuck. I have looked at his mouth closely and you can even seen inside because he is a fairly big fish. He's probably about 5 or 6 inches in length. I've had him for about a month now. The other fish I have had for about 6 months.

How often are you doing Water changes and gravel vacs? You have a Nitrite reading which should actually be reading 0 on an established tank.Have you tried a water change recently? What size /type filter do you have on the tank? Does he have any other symptoms, frayed fins/red streaks/flashing,etc?

If you have gravel in the tank, you should really try to get a good look inside his throat, as Koko mentioned.

The best way to do this is to hold the fish just under the surface of the water and gently push up under his throat in between his gills. This will open his mouth and will force anything lodged in his throat forward. Often there can be a bit of gravel in there that keeps getting sucked backwards when the fish tries to breathe.

If there is nothing in there, I would do a good sized water change of about 30% and see if that perks him up. How much salt did you add?

Also, as Devs mentioned, letting us know a little about your routine maintenance and any other behaviour the fish is exhibiting might give us a clue to what is going on.