One of my fish has died and I think I'm to blame

[thebestisyettocome]

We went away for a few days and I gave them a feed which was supposed to feed a lot more than the two small fish I have. When I returned one of the fish was quite bloated and I'm wondering if he overfed?

Does anyone have experience of this sort of thing?

[Marne]

What fish are they? are his scales sticking out (a bit like a pine cone)? if so sadly the outcome is not good, i wouldn't have thought it was caused by over feeding.

[EauRouge]

The extra ammonia from the extra food is more likely to be the culprit, rather than the fish eating too much. Sometimes it's hard to pin point exactly what killed a fish but if you give us some more info then we can have a guess and try to stop it from happening again.

What sort of fish are they, how big is the tank and do you have any recent water test results?

[thebestisyettocome]

Thanks for the replies. I have two young fish in a large tank with a good filtration system. One is a goldfish (seems fine). The other is one of those which looks like a goldfish but is silver and gold (can't remember the name). As I said, it seemed bloated and his gills were wide open and bright red which I knew was a sign of trouble.

[EauRouge]

The other sounds like a sarasa comet, a breed of goldfish. Did you manage to get water readings? How big is the tank? Sarasa comets are better off in ponds really, they get very big and they are active.

[thebestisyettocome]

I think it is a Sarasa comet EauRouge. I was planning to transfer them to a pond when they get too big for the tank but sadly that will not now happen for one of them. I think the tank is 30 litres (could be bigger though).

[EauRouge]

Is there any reason why you can't transfer them over now while it's still warm? 30 litres is on the small side, even for baby goldfish.

If you want to keep him inside until next year then I would go for something around 90 litres and you would still need to move him to the pond come spring. They grow really quickly and zip around like crazy so they really do need loads of room.

[thebestisyettocome]

Ok. I'll try that