Where's my hair shirt ... Killed DD's Oranda trying to rid it's white spot with a salt dip ...

[Snowstorm]

... Feel traumatised at watching the poor little thing's death throes and so guilty. Poor little fish. Poor DD. Poor lonely remaining fish.

Sorry you lost the fish. Have you treated the tank the other one is in? I've always had good results with Interpet's medicine range.

Salt dip? Did you try any meds first? Waterlife is my preferred brand. some strains of whitespot are getting resistant to meds so you might need to try more than one.

How big is the tank and what are the water readings?

I'm an absolute amateur with fish but here we go ...

One fish developed a furry white spot when we first got them last year from a well known large pet shop franchise and I used the salt dip, as recommended by our local specialised aquatic shop and treated their tank with Protozin Whitespot & Fungus. That sorted it out and we all lived happily right up until the point when I moved them to their new 54 litre tank which was 3 weeks or so ago. Did it all as the fish man said and I've been taking the water to the shop to get tested so that they can advise/help me and the water readings were 'good'. However ... the orange oranda developed 3 little white spots on one of her fins at the end of last week and the other one a furry spot, so I repeated what I'd did last year ... only this time our lovely little orange one didn't ever recover from the salt dip and she died in front of all of us on Monday night. Awful, just awful.

Since then I've halted the salt dips (obviously), done a partial water change (with anti-chlorine stuff and good bacteria), finished the treatment of the medicine on the tank yesterday, kept the lights low and left our remaining fish (who 'seems' fine in himself ... so far) alone so that he's not further stressed/traumatised.

I feel quite traumatised though ...

I haven't talked this through with the fish ma yet but figure that if we can keep this little fish happy and alive for another 4-6 weeks (thus more or less completing the cycling of the tank) then we can perhaps think about buying another fish (hopefully something compatible with but hardier than an oranda) to keep him company.

Sorry about the typos, I pressed 'post' before checking it over.

Oh dear :(

Right. When you moved them over to their new tank, how exactly did you do it? Did you move the filter or filter sponges over? How big was their old tank.

The thing about fishkeeping is that most of the people in the shops don't really know what they're on about. Even in some of the specialist shops you tend to get quite a lot of 'old school' fishkeepers that are a bit behind on the acceptable standard of welfare. I don't know if this is what has happened here. You did the right thing trying to find an expert but there are a lot of self-appointed experts that really aren't. You should never put a fish in an uncycled tank- there's just no reason to and if the fella in the shop doesn't know this then he needs to get up to speed!

So, here's what I can tell you-

54 litres is too small for even a single oranda (sit down for this part). One oranda is going to need at least 130 litres and two are going to need about 180 litres+. They get big and they grow fast, and they make a lot of mess. They do not grow to the size of their tank. They can live up to about 15 years with the right care. Most places won't bother telling you this, either because they've never seen a fully grown goldfish or because they know you won't buy a goldfish if you know how big they're going to get.

I would get your own water testing kit, because one person's interpretation of 'good' water quality could be very different from another's. The API master test kit is a good one. You need to be able to test for ammonia, nitrIte, nitrAte and pH at the very least.

BTW, most of those bacterial supplement things are a waste of money. There's a lot of crap available in aquatic shops that is either pointless or (worse) damaging- it's a bloody minefield and I wish there was more consumer protection!

Did you get a definite diagnosis on the white spot? Ich doesn't show up as fluffy, it looks more like grains of salt or glitter.

Thanks for taking the time to get back to me. You are absolutely right on the whole minefield thing ... and yet our many friends who are fish owners who I talked to when I was looking into getting fish, were obviously the lucky ones as they do and don't do all sorts of things to their fish tanks and water that I now know would certainly have killed ours off.

Old tank was 24 Litres (I know what you're thinking but it was okay'd by that big pet shop ... who also didn't tell we had bought Orandas and that they were not great for beginners) and I used the same filter and sponges and plastic plants - all cleaned as if I was doing a clean out and partial water change which I used to do around every 4 weeks.

I assumed that we could keep the fish in this tank until they outgrew it and then I'd get a bigger tank or re-home them. Actually ... after the first X weeks of having them last year I thought that having a new puppy would be easier to look after initially and that we'd be lucky if the little fish lived to grow much.

I have Googled myself senseless on fish and fish keeping in the past year but there are so many opinions out there as to how to do things that I stopped doing it and went to the local aquatic shop instead so that there was continuity with the advice I was being given. It worked fine for me and the little fish, until the tank change/now ...

The white fluffy was a fungal infection but the spots were quite different - small white spots, three in a cluster, but not raised and fluffy.

As and when the time comes, I'm going to go and get some boring but easy to look after fish to fit our tank!

It's very hard to tell when they need to move up a size tank, that's why it's best to start off with a big one. They can become stunted and the damage will be done before you can see anything wrong.

You could have a little shoal of minnows in a tank that size, but what are you going to do with the oranda?

Are minnows relatively easy to look after then?

If our remaining oranda died (and I assume he's an oranda because that's what the pet store people put on our receipt but he doesn't have anything on his head yet) then would I need to empty the tank, give it a really good clean and then start cycling it all over again before thinking of adding minnows? How would I do it please?

Yes, they are piss easy. Orandas are too given the right start, but the people at the big chain store are notoriously rubbish at giving fish advice which is why you've had so many problems.

If your oranda does snuff it then yes, I would give the tank a good scrub with a weak bleach solution (then rinse it about a billion times) and then cycle it again for a few weeks before getting any more fish.

If you don't have the space to upgrade the oranda (and he needs it soon!) then you could try rehoming him. There are a lot of aquatic groups on Facebook, you'll get to be selective about where he goes. There are lots of people that rehome fancy goldfish. Orandas don't get their hoods until they're a bit older.

Okay - thank you so much for all of this - really helpful. I think the aquatic centre might take the oranda if I was desperate.