Advice On Water Changes For An Elderly Goldfish

[LaRocK]

Hi Folks,

First post on the forum so I hope this is in the correct section.

I have an elderly goldfish named George, he's around 9 and still in fine condition for his years. He lives on a diet of Aquiarian fish food and bloodworms 3-4 times per week and has been pretty healthy for most of his days.

My question is with regard to water changes in his tank, he has had fin rot on and off for the past year or so (which usually occurs prior to or following a water change. In the past I used Waterlife Myxazin to treat the fin rot and it always worked, but the last time it happened the Myxazin didn't do much and his fin rot was the worst I have ever seen it. Clutching at straws I went to the local pet store and was given Interpet Anti Fungus & Fin Rot and used it as per the instructions. Thankfully after 3 days he rallied and his amazing powers of regeneration kicked in. He's back to his old self again buzzing around the tank but is due a partial water change over the next few days and I'm worried that I'll #28### things up again and send him into fin rot frenzy. So after that long winded explination here are my questions for you all (by the way he is in a Hagen Elite Style 35 Goldfish Tank with Stingray filter):

1. How often should I do a water change for him? (I have a gravel cleaner/syphon for pulling the water out of the tank).
2. Last time I took the water straight from our filtered tap, is this too cold to put in and should I let it reach room temp overnight first?
3. I have seen many treatments that are designed to keep the bacteria levels in thew tank at an optimal level. Are these worhtwhile and if so which one do you recommend?

Thanks for you time in advance, George is kinda part of the family now and I want to make his later years as enjoyable as possible.

Cheers

 

[waterdrop]

Hi LaRock and Welcome to TFF!

I am probably not qualified to answer much of this but since no one else has commented I'll chat with you. It's possible you may find Wilder or some of the other people more experienced with meds over in the emergencies section and find out if there are some more effective things against fin rot these days.

I'm reading two things into your post that may or may not be true so you'll have to clarify. Since George is 9, I assume the current tank he's in may have been running all that time, but is that the case? Secondly, since you say he seems to get the finrot in association with water changes, that implies the water changes are few enough a far between that you can associate an episode.. implying that water changes don't come all that often, but how often and at what size (percentage of tank volume) do they actually happen?

It is my understanding that a number of types of carp, including goldfish, are very, very tough fish. I think of them as almost a bit like channel cats that can live under really ugly conditions in working river bottoms, but I'm not an ichthyologist, so I may just be repeating misunderstandings, lol. As such, it may be difficult to use a given situation a fish has survived in to judge what might be the best actual environment for it, is at least my thought of the moment.

The environment I'm thinking of are the heavy metals, hundreds of organics and other substances, including nitrates(NO3) that naturally build up in any body of fresh water as the pure H2O evaporates off and leaves them and possibly in some circumstances tap water is used to top up from the evaporative loss. In freshwater fishkeeping, with experience, we learn to take this aspect of water maintenance seriously, developing various habits to try and keep our tank water as close to our tap water characteristics as possible. This habit is usually introduced to beginners as "the weekly water change" and in a goldfish tank would be a pretty healthy change such as 50% since any vegetarian fish creates a lot of waste, relatively.

If the water is not changed out at a frequent rate and significant amount like this but instead falls into a pattern of topping up (happens especially in the dry winter heat) then we can accelerate this sort of substance buildup and the fish will gradually become used to the different mineral content level, possibly then being affected when that mineral content changes suddenly. It turns out the nitrate(NO3) testing is our "canary in the coal mine" for having an indicator we consider symbolic for all the hundreds of other substances. We like to get a handle on this by keeping regular NO3 test results in the aquarium notebook, so we can see long term trends we might forget otherwise.

All of this substance buildup and NO3 talk is also just one part of good overall testing. The part I've described to you is the more subtle aspect, but of course there is more basic testing of ammonia and nitrite(NO2,) which are the fundamental poisons of freshwater tanks and of which I'm sure you may have run across or are regularly testing for. An important detail of all of these is that you need a good liquid-reagent based test kit (as opposed to paper strip tests, or the error-prone practice of getting an occasional test from a shop.) So let us know your practices in that area, as well as the water changing ones.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[LaRocK]

Hi LaRock and Welcome to TFF!

I am probably not qualified to answer much of this but since no one else has commented I'll chat with you. It's possible you may find Wilder or some of the other people more experienced with meds over in the emergencies section and find out if there are some more effective things against fin rot these days.

I'm reading two things into your post that may or may not be true so you'll have to clarify. Since George is 9, I assume the current tank he's in may have been running all that time, but is that the case? Secondly, since you say he seems to get the finrot in association with water changes, that implies the water changes are few enough a far between that you can associate an episode.. implying that water changes don't come all that often, but how often and at what size (percentage of tank volume) do they actually happen?

It is my understanding that a number of types of carp, including goldfish, are very, very tough fish. I think of them as almost a bit like channel cats that can live under really ugly conditions in working river bottoms, but I'm not an ichthyologist, so I may just be repeating misunderstandings, lol. As such, it may be difficult to use a given situation a fish has survived in to judge what might be the best actual environment for it, is at least my thought of the moment.

The environment I'm thinking of are the heavy metals, hundreds of organics and other substances, including nitrates(NO3) that naturally build up in any body of fresh water as the pure H2O evaporates off and leaves them and possibly in some circumstances tap water is used to top up from the evaporative loss. In freshwater fishkeeping, with experience, we learn to take this aspect of water maintenance seriously, developing various habits to try and keep our tank water as close to our tap water characteristics as possible. This habit is usually introduced to beginners as "the weekly water change" and in a goldfish tank would be a pretty healthy change such as 50% since any vegetarian fish creates a lot of waste, relatively.

If the water is not changed out at a frequent rate and significant amount like this but instead falls into a pattern of topping up (happens especially in the dry winter heat) then we can accelerate this sort of substance buildup and the fish will gradually become used to the different mineral content level, possibly then being affected when that mineral content changes suddenly. It turns out the nitrate(NO3) testing is our "canary in the coal mine" for having an indicator we consider symbolic for all the hundreds of other substances. We like to get a handle on this by keeping regular NO3 test results in the aquarium notebook, so we can see long term trends we might forget otherwise.

All of this substance buildup and NO3 talk is also just one part of good overall testing. The part I've described to you is the more subtle aspect, but of course there is more basic testing of ammonia and nitrite(NO2,) which are the fundamental poisons of freshwater tanks and of which I'm sure you may have run across or are regularly testing for. An important detail of all of these is that you need a good liquid-reagent based test kit (as opposed to paper strip tests, or the error-prone practice of getting an occasional test from a shop.) So let us know your practices in that area, as well as the water changing ones.

~~waterdrop~~

Thanks for the in depth response waterdrop

I change the water in his tank once per month, and I usually do 30% of a change. He moved up 3 months ago from a 17ltr tank to the 35 litre one. I think the mistake I made initially was only changing 1/5 th of the water at 2 week intervals, and for reasons unbeknown to myself I did not use the syphon to clean the gravel at the bottom of the tank, I took it out from the top. This brain fart may have been the main reason for the decline and apologies for not putting it in my initial post.
I have done no water test kits in the tank so far, I guess my next move is to do a water change again and see how it goes. It's whether to change 1/3, 1/2, 2/3 or whatever that I am unsure of. From your post it would appear that a weekly 50% water change is the way to go, that will certainly be no problem to do and if it keep sthe little guy truckin along then I'm happy with it.

Once again thanks for your time taken in responding to this issue bud.

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, I'd even start with a couple of large changes that leave him just enough room not to be uncovered. If you are not testing then you would have no way of knowing whether he was being exposed to ammonia and/or nitrite(NO2,) greatly increasing the chance of problems like finrot. And yes, a nice 50% weekly gravel-clean-water-change will be a much better habit than once a month. The filter sponge may need a gentle rinse in tank water at a two-week interval (in the middle of that week's water change) rather than monthly. Singray filters have also been known to allow water to bypass filtration, sometimes leaving measurable amounts of ammonia in the water, despite filter bacteria being present.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[LaRocK]

Yes, I'd even start with a couple of large changes that leave him just enough room not to be uncovered. If you are not testing then you would have no way of knowing whether he was being exposed to ammonia and/or nitrite(NO2,) greatly increasing the chance of problems like finrot. And yes, a nice 50% weekly gravel-clean-water-change will be a much better habit than once a month. The filter sponge may need a gentle rinse in tank water at a two-week interval (in the middle of that week's water change) rather than monthly. Singray filters have also been known to allow water to bypass filtration, sometimes leaving measurable amounts of ammonia in the water, despite filter bacteria being present.

~~waterdrop~~

That's great, I'll start that routine and see how we go. I used a fluval filter before in his previous tank, the stingray has a low profile though and sits flat onto one of the tank walls and gives him more room to swim around. Can you recommend another filter that will hopefully prevent the bypass of filtration you are talking about?

Thanks again Waterdrop!

 

[waterdrop]

Those comments are based on any number of comments by members who have discussed their stingrays. I have not owned one myself so you have to take the comments with that. It might certainly be in order to log your ammonia and nitrite readings over a period of weeks (to see if you keep getting trace readings or if the filter can settle down into solid zero ppm readings) before going out and spending money.

If you did decide to change filters, there are any number of smaller EC models from the major 3 competitors Rena, Fluval and Eheim (and others) that would probably give you the sort of flow rate you want in a 35 US gallon like yours. If you are interested in getting the filter out of the picture, that accomplishes it even more.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[LaRocK]

Will check those readings after the water change which I am going to do tomorrow and I will see how things settle down before buying a new filter, cheers again for the advice.

 

[JMcQueen]

When you say you take the water straight from the tap, do you use a dechlorinator before adding the water to the tank? Also, do you have a filter running on the tap. Im trying to establish if the tank is cycled properly.

Forgive me if Im teaching my grandma to suck eggs but a lot of people dont know about cycling.

A lot of people with goldfish just start out with a smallish tank and change the water when it starts to get dirty. My girlfriend did, thats how I became intersted in the hobby.

The problem with this is that the water is contaminated with ammonia, nitrate and nitrite long before it looks dirty to the eye. This lowers the immune system of the fish and makes it more susceptible to diseas. Not to mention that the ammonia and nitrite and toxic in even the lowest of quantities. Believe it or not, 9 isnt that old for a goldfish. It just that most of them dont live that long due to being exposed to poor water conditions.

 

[LaRocK]

When you say you take the water straight from the tap, do you use a dechlorinator before adding the water to the tank? Also, do you have a filter running on the tap. Im trying to establish if the tank is cycled properly.

Forgive me if Im teaching my grandma to suck eggs but a lot of people dont know about cycling.

A lot of people with goldfish just start out with a smallish tank and change the water when it starts to get dirty. My girlfriend did, thats how I became intersted in the hobby.

The problem with this is that the water is contaminated with ammonia, nitrate and nitrite long before it looks dirty to the eye. This lowers the immune system of the fish and makes it more susceptible to diseas. Not to mention that the ammonia and nitrite and toxic in even the lowest of quantities. Believe it or not, 9 isnt that old for a goldfish. It just that most of them dont live that long due to being exposed to poor water conditions.

Hi J,

Our tap in the kitchen has an inline filter in it that removes the chlorine and most of the impurities. And no you aint teachin your Grandma at all, I really need as much help as possible to get this right and save the hassle in the future and have no real knowledge about cycling. Any tips or recommendations on test kits, tank cycling additives you can give would be grand and also if you think the fluval stingray pump should be replaced due to concerns already raised by waterdrop it'd be good to have some more pointers there.

Cheers