I’ve posted about this on a more general forum, but wanted to get a more goldfish oriented view. I have a comet that has over the past month turned almost white. Timmy’s about 5 or 6 inches now, appx 1 year old, and lives in a 55 gal with two other slightly smaller comets and a blackmoore. I’ve hadn’t had much in the way of Ammonia or Nitrite for months except when one of the filters stopped working for a few days (I have a 330 and a 350 GPH) or when I had them on flake food. For the most part I have been dealing with Nitrate which has regularly gone up to 80 ppm in a week.

I was changing about 50% once a week, but have lately been working harder on the Nitrate and am now testing the tank midweek and changing it, as needed. I don’t have the resources to buy them a bigger tank or build them a pond, so I’m sure I’ll be upping my water changes more as the fish get even bigger.

I’ve heard it’s not uncommon for Comets to turn white, even in the best of circumstances. I’m just wondering what the various causes are and if it’s reversable.

Scruffy

PS: I just saw someone reccomended a 100% water change to someone with a nitrate problem. How do you do that? Do you put the fish in a bucket? What if your tap PH doesn’t match the PH in the tank? Do you just do a series of daily water changes?

i've heard of lots of fish changing color to white, ur overstocked though so u need to do lots of waterchanges

My comet, Lloyd, is almost completely white. The very tops if his eyes and his top lip are orange. He's the one on the far left in my sig.

Shamu is right. You are overstocked. It's reccomended that comets/commons have a minimum of 20gal each, and fancies have 10gal minimum...

I have a common in my pond that was mostly orange with some white but over the summer she went completely white. I've had her for almost 6 years and she just now changed. I hope its not all that uncommon

I know it's overstocked. I have toyed with the idea of getting an extra 20 or 29 for the blackmoor and maybe an Oranda or fantail. That would give each of my comets 18 and 1/3 gallons. I don't happen to have the funds right now to get one set up. Now I am going to have to rely on my buckets and my gravel vac. It's funny, when I first went out to get goldfish, I thought the comets would be less work!

goldfish do often change color, often it's not reversible, it's a bit like when our hair goes grey/white, it's not necessarily environmental, although if goldies are kept in darkness their colour does tend to fade, the pigment in their skin is similar to ours, it gets darker if we are left in the sun/under uv.

If you havent done a big waterchange in a while I'd suggest you do one, just to get out the nitrates/organic waste that builds up. I don't know about doing a 100% change, lots of 50% waterchanges, like every day for a week will do your fish a world of good. how different is your tap pH from your tank pH?

Right now, my tank's PH is about 6.8. Our tap water is very alkaline. The highest PH on the card is 7.8 with kind of a royal blue/bright aquamarine color. When I test the tap water, it comes out navy blue. This tank could use a 75% water change ca 60 ppm nitrate, but I am short on time tonight. Tomorrow, I'll do a 50% and then check it again Sunday night. Someone told me to use baking soda once to raise my PH. I'd do it tonight if I could remember the dosage.

a few yrs back my very calico Shuby turned white.. hes still white and healthy..

Florence was orange and white when I first got her, but as she grew, she also turned completely white. She's healthy though, and I think thats a common thing.

Thats totally normal.they do that.I wouldnt worry.

The little common in my sig below was about half orange when I got him. Now he's only got some orange on his head. And he's still a baby, not sure he's even a year old yet. He is also very healthy and active and I love the irredescent look the white scales have.

This is Toby. He's a BluRyu from Goldfish Utopia. The BluRyus are a TungHoi special. You can see he WAS silver & blue.


Now Toby Solid White!