That's sounding more positive.

It's a two-edged sword as she's pretty stressed and delicate at the moment, so any new treatment could work instant wonders or it could just stress her even more and make her go downhill. So as it's a bit of a gamble, if she's eating fine I'd suggest just keep her on the antibiotic food and watch her carefully (and her poop) just for for a few days before deciding on any new treatment (doctors call that keeping the patient under observation!). Since removing the strong current, it sounds like she's already shown a bit of improvement.

PS. Medications and medicated food like Maracyn, Furan2 and even Medigold are all unavailable in my neck of the woods (Australia) and I've never tried the bucket-to-bucket method, so I have no experience with them and should really defer to the knowledge and experience of Daryl and Andrea who are familiar with these sorts of treatments.

Awrieger, thanks. But you do know plenty on TDS! And I think you are right about what you say. I wonder how many people have problematic fish that have a problem with TDS? On another thread in Water, I asked if anyone knew where I could find something to test my tap and tank water for TDS, I have a feeling I might find something there that needs immediate addressing! Do you test your TDS with something?

Thanks. I actually don't know as much as I'd like to about TDS and its affects on goldfish (especially if I'm going around giving advice about it!). I first learned about it from reading about it in commercial fisheries material where they have to deal with vastly more overcrowded stock and pollution in their tanks than we home aquarists do. And if the professional farmers think it's important enough to continually test for it, why aren't we?

So when my redcap ranchu Fuji (the beautiful fish in my avatar) started getting sick and developing swimming problems last December (from which she's never recovered and is sadly now permanently on her side), and all the usual home aquarium tests showed the water was 'fine', I bought a TDS meter and the reading was over 1,200ppm (with no salt added to the water), which is excessively high for fresh water.

And just like with my Fuji, you'll see a lot of posts here (nearly every day almost) where people say their tests show ammonia 0, nitrites 0 and nitrates 20, which are 'ideal' levels, yet still their fish are getting sick and having swimming and buoyancy problems. So my belief now is that the cause is usually the build up of other toxins in their tanks which we can't test for from either not changing enough water or not cleaning the filter or gravel frequently enough, and it can be measured by the TDS levels. Meds will treat the symtpoms, but not the original cause, so my stock standard answer is always to do an immediate 90% water change and clean the gravel/filter before doing anything else.

If you feel my advice has helped you, then I might do some more thorough research on it and post more info about it.

I just bought my TDS meter from an online aquarium store. If you google 'TDS meter' you'll get several dozen pages of retailers selling them! Just an inexpensive handheld one like this one will do the job.

Thanks so much! And may I say that your fish and tank is beautiful! I looked at your album. Wow. Gorgeous. Wow.

Since my fish have all at one time or another had floating/SBD problems, and I am not one to overfeed, and my water always tests perfect, I feel what you say makes SO MUCH SENSE. I think getting rid of the gravel really helped me - and I also noticed a change in all my fish since I cleaned out all the gunk, etc., in the filters - So...what should the TDS levels be in a tank and/or out of the tap??

Hi Newfishmom! I'm sorry you are still having trouble!

As you know, I've been struggling for over a month with sick fish. I had my water tested at a laboratory. Until you get a TDS meter, check the yellow pages under Laboratories - Testing. My test cost $12. If you don't see anything there, look for water treatment companies. Most companies who install RO systems and sell RO water have TDS meters. You can ask them if they will test your tank water if you bring the sample to them. Many of those water companies are very helpful on water testing.

I was shocked to discover that I had a TDS of over 4,000. Ideal is under 400. (And my ammonia, nitrites, and nitrates looked great.)

I'm watching your posts and praying for you and your sweeties.

Thanks for the compliments! And great to hear of the positive change in your fish now!

It really depends on what's coming out of your tap which could vary from area to area deopending on the water hardness etc (ideally it shouldn't be higher than 400 or so). And then it builds up from there once in your tank. So you're basically relying on what's in your tap as to what you can actually aim for.

My own tap water TDS is 130, which is quite good. But if you have really high TDS out of your tap like Daryl does (1000 I think), the only way to get it down is by reverse osmosis filtering as she does. I try to keep my tank's TDS below 300 if I can.

Hi everyone:
Well, I have my little one on Metromed right now - she is back to the isolating thing again - hangs out by the bubble wall, kind of nose down. The minute she sees me, she swims over - she eats ok - I am going to take Stormysgrandma's advice and find out exactly what is going on with my TDS in my water. But honestly, guys, I am really starting to wonder if this little fish isn't permanently damaged from the constipation issue she had months ago...my other three fish are perfectly fine and responsive - they eat great, they don't show any signs of parasites or any other type of infection, just her. She is on day two of Metromed and I have seen NO change in her behavior. I also did another does of Parasite Clear, but my gut instinct says there's no parasites in my tank, because as I said my other fish just don't present ANY type of symptoms..at this point I am going to see what happens with the Metromed...if that doesn't work I really don't know what else to do - I've tried everything - as you can see from this post...Maybe this is just how she is going to be, I just don't know..

NFM, I can certainly sympathize with you. It is so sad and frustrating. The only thing I can offer up is that several months back (when I first found this site) I had one fish die and lots of problems with Nugget. I also tried everything Parasite CLear, Marcyns, Prazi, Fungus Clear, salt, med food, etc, etc. Some problems would clear up but Nugget's behavior stayed similar to your fish - isolated and hiding, white poop, just sad looking. There were many times I thought he wouldn't make it. I was told that at that point the best thing was to just use clean water - no meds, no salt, normal food, etc. and see what happens. Well it took about 4 weeks of this (during which time he still hid most of the day) but he finally came around. Do you still have any meds or salt in the tank? It might be worth just trying this when you are done with the course of metromeds? It would certainly be easier on the fish this way as well.

By the way I posted in the food section on feeding and SBD and got some new suggestions on foods to try. Good luck.

--sea

I'm watching your posts every day, Newfishmom. I'm still struggling with two if my fish as wel

Don't give up! If there is a solution you will find it!

Thanks you two - my plan is to put all my focus on CLEAN water - let's keep our fingers crossed...

Update: Hi everyone - my last tank clean/water change I broke my bubble wand. I have been 48 hours no bubbles and my isolating fish is no longer isolating on the bottom but now floating around about mid tank. I wonder if the bubbles made too much current? I don't think so, because I had a big log for them to hide in - I don't get it - anyways, I still have white stringy poop and I am on day five of Metromed - plus, today when I fed her I noticed that she spit her food out - I have my second round second dose of Parasite Clear in there - - what now?

That's interesting. It actually gives a good indication of her condition. Is she actually swimming, or just drifting around like she's stunned? Swimming - good, drifting - bad.

I can think of two possibilities. One is the current created by the bubbles is too strong for her to fight against in her weakened condition so she's trying to find shelter in the lea of a corner. The other is that it was too noisy (put your ear up against the glass when it's turned on and try to imagine sleeping with that racket!). You can reduce the noise about 25% by moving the bubble wand away from the glass sides so the air bubble & pump noise doesn't reverberate off the glass.

If she's still pooping long stringy whites, then she still has the internal infection. Especially now that she's starting to spit the food out. It's important to keep the antibiotic food getting into her where it can do its job. I've heard there is a version with garlic flavour to enhance their appetite for it even if they have difficulty eating which you might need to resort to using.

As for parasites. If there ever were any in the first place then they're surely all gone now, so you can cross them off your list. She now has some sort of personal internal infection she needs to battle. The best thing after giving her antibiotic food is to just keep her environment as clean and healthy as possible to aid her own immune system which will do most of the battling. Unfortunately loss of appetite is not a good sign. Not only will she not be getting the energy she needs form the food, she'll also not be able to intake any antibiotics, so you need to prepare yourself for the worst. But it's important that you don't give up until she does herself, as sometimes they can get worse before they start getting better suddenly. A lot like us really!


PS. Air bubble currents are just meant to lift the oxygen O2-poor water from the bottom up to the surface where the O2 can get replenished via the surface gas exchange. This surface exchange means the water near the surface always has more O2 than the water down below. So we need to keep switching the two around via circulation. The actual bubbles themselves provide very little O2 as the O2 mostly comes via the surface gas exchange. The bubble wand current also helps to ripple the surface to increase the surface area a little bit which increases the gaseous exchange rate. So it only really needs to be strong enough to create that water circulation from the bottom to the top and around down again in a circular pattern. Technically, if it is strong enough that the fish have to fight to swim against it, it's probably too strong, but it depends on the size of the fish really.

Thanks for posting back Awrieger, I really appreciate your input. As for your two possibilities, I really think it is a little bit of both - the bubble wand was VERY noisy, and I am thinking since my RENA pump has TWO outputs, I had two bubble wands about sixteen inches long - we had lots of bubbles, hence maybe too much current? Anyways, as for my little fantail, she goes back and forth - she will actively swim awhile, and then kind of drift mid tank - but she is swimming more than drifting - she looks less miserable since I moved the bubble wand, that's for sure -
So, now what do I do about the bubble wand, I am kind of nervous that my babies won't have enough O2 if I don't put one in - I am running 550 gph on a 46 gallon tank, but I was actually considering upgrading one filter which would have me running 750 gph, I am thinking with that there would be enough circulation, no? what do you think?

Sorry I haven't replied sooner! I read your other thread about the bubble wand and I see I missed that she was actually up against the bubble wand and not in a corner like I thought. This makes sense as the current created by the bubble wand draws water at the bottom towards it and then up, so your fish is literally being dragged to the wand and is too weak to fight against it constantly.

I just have a single airstone in one corner of my 43g and also aim the filter outlet upwards towards the surface to achieve the same result of circulating the water upwards, which seems enough to do the trick for my tank.

So I'd recommend starting with a single small airstone and watch the fish to see if it's enough. If it looks like they're gasping or at the surface gasping, then add a bigger one and so on. How have they been behaving without any bubble wand at all over the last few days? If they're not chronically gasping, then maybe a small airstone is all you need. Your fish has dramatically improved without the strong bubblewand current, so it was probably too much to start with anyway.

Hi Awrieger! How are you? Good I hope - I bought some small airstones today - the other three fish are at the top of the water more than they were before when I had the long bubble wall - my Mckenzie, who is huge - maybe six and a half inches, has been at the top, and when I had the bubble wand, she rarely went up - so I am going to do my cleaning of the tank tomorrow and put the airstones in - it's a hard situation because my little bibbles (sick fish) can't take too much bubbles, but my other three need it. I'll let you know what happens with the airstones..thanks for your input!

Awrieger..you around? Hopefully...ok - I put the airstones back in for the other fish tonight. They are small - maybe about three inches each and boy do they bubble! they actually seem even stronger then my 36 inch bubble wand! I think I know the problem, see, I have a Whisper pump and it has dual outlets so I have to use two airstones - anyways, once again my little fish seems to be fighting the bubbles - now what? I don't know what to do - these are pretty small airstones, I guess I can get two "one inch" airstones..should I try that? Or, should I get a small airpump??? The whisper I have is for tanks up to 60 gallons, mine is a 46..should I get one for a thirty gallon tank? I don't know what to do - my three fish like the bubbles, and my little one doesn't...

Hi Newfishmon. So your other three definitely need a bit more oxygen! There's no point getting a bigger airstone to spread it out a bit as you've already seen that even with a long wand it's still too strong. So you need to reduce the amount of air. I assume the Whisper air pump doesn't have a control to adjust how much air it's pumping, so you need to buy a couple of little plastic air control valves for a dollar each or so (the lower green one with the turnable knob here) which you can attach to the tubing and adjust the amount of air up or down. In your case, down!

In the meantime, just take one of the airstones out completely. Either just let it dangle in the air outside the tank, or pull its tube out of the airpump completely leaving the second outlet open (which is the noiser option). The pump will just be pumping air into the air, so it's fine.

With the remaining airstone, raise it off the bottom of the tank either a few or several inches to reduce its efficiency.

Or, you could just get a smaller pump as you suggested! The valves are cheaper though and sometimes it's good to have a larger pump and extra air there if you need it in an emergency at the simple turn of a little plastic knob.

Ok..great. Thanks Awrieger. Poor little thing - she just can't take the bubbles! I am going right away to get those valves - I've seen them at my LFS, I just didn't know they actually could adjust air output...It's so interesting the way each of my fish have personalities, the three others let me know in their own way that they missed the bubbles..nothing to dramatic, but I could just tell. Thanks so much for your help - Let me ask you one more question, more of an opinion, do you think that goldies like having plants in their tank? I sometimes wonder if the plants I have (they are the "silk" kind - very real looking, not plastic - I have three of them) - anyways, I wonder if the plants do more harm then good - what I mean by that is (1) do they block waste from getting to the intake strainers and (2) even though they are not real, do they do anything to the water? I think they look pretty - but sometimes I wonder - what do you think?

Hey Newfishmom!! How's it going??

I've been swamped with work and haven't had a chance to check in with you. How are your fishies???