another dead goldfish - please help

[3littlefrogs]

I have done everything by the book - oxygenating plant, dechlorinated water,test kit, proper food, no overfeeding, occasional pea for them to nibble. They seem to last about 3 weeks and then get a fungal infection. I treated this one with Gold - disease safe, straight away, isolated it etc.

This is the second one that has died. I must be doing something wrong, but I can't think what. I have an electric filter, and prepared the tank 2 weeks before putting the fish in, as instructed by man in shop.

Nitrite levels have always been fine. The only thing is I think my water is a bit hard - could that be enough to kill the fish?

Sorry this is so long. I would be grateful for any advice. Dd (8) is going to be so upset. Maybe I should have let her have a hamster?

Fish2 died this morning. Sigh..................
So now I have tank, filter plus large quantity of test kits, remedies, food etc. So what now????

I'm so sorry You really did everything you could.

From the sound of your readings I don't think you're far away from the full cycle - what do you think Gingerbear? A week away at most?

What would you like to do - get another goldfish? finish it off as a fishless cycle? go tropical? Sell everything on ebay and get that hamster?

Whatever you decide we're here to be bombarded with questions (well, maybe not about the hamster... I know sod all about hamsters...)

My gut feeling is that I would like to carry on with a fishless cycle. Then replace fish when i am sure tank is ok. Maybe less chance of killing off another fish.
I know it is daft, but the worst thing is poor dd. This is the first time in her life that her mum hasn't been able to sort everything out, and I feel really bad.

Having bought all the stuff, I refuse to be beaten. We really don't have anywhere suitable to keep a hamster, and ds2 has asthma anyway. He wants a snake BTW!!!!!

So - what next? I have left the water in the tank, filter is switched off, dead fish removed and will soon join his friend under the apple tree.
Oxygenating plants still in tank, but one or two bits look a bit discoloured.
As fish definitely had fungus - bits of skin in tank, what should I do about the water?

thanks so much for your support, advice and your time!

Fish are weird things, sometimes you can pull them back from the brink against all the odds, other times they keel over before you even knew they were sickening for something. All you can do is give them the best possible environment and hope for the best a lot of the times, and you certainly did that.

I know exactly how you feel about your dd. I'm not sure that it's any consolation but my dses are now quite blase about fish death ever since we had a dodgy batch of neon tetras that popped their clogs one after the other. They got quite adept at pointing out the floaters - I'm convinced they think we get thrown in the bin when we die now...

Right. Fishless cycle then. Turn the filter back on - remember that's where a lot of your good bacteria are going to live, so that still needs to be running.

Water, leave as is - no fish are going in yet so you don't need to worry for a while - no water changes until cycle over, yippee! Fungus is bacterial rather than parasitical which makes life easier. I'd just stick a dose of that Melafix in when it arrives, then once you've had a really good clean out at the end of the cycle add another dose so the new fish gets a bit of a tonic

Cheapest way without any additional expense on your part is probably to go the fish flake route. Have you got a small net you can rest in your tank or an old pair of tights you could cut up? Not essential but it makes clean out at the end easier. You'll want to add 1-2 fishflakes a day to provide lots of waste for the bacteria to thrive on.

You may well see the plants fare quite badly over the next couple of weeks. They don't tend to do well in a cycle, but most do pick up again at the end. On the plus side, at least oxygenator weed is fairly cheap to replace if it does all go tits up.

So... daily tests... it'll be interesting to see what ammonia readings you're getting once that arrives as we'll be able to better judge how far along in the cycle you are from that. I'm going to cheat now and link to a great description of a fishless cycle because I don't want to miss anything important. It's here - let me know if you can't see that and I'll copy and paste.

Basically you want to keep your ammonia reading around 1-2ppm to keep the cycle going by rotting that flake (stop adding flake if ammonia is higher than that - just keep the current stuff rotting - add a bit more if it drops lower than that). Nitrites should climb, peak and then suddenly fall to 0. More detail in the link above.

Thanks so much - I have printed everything, and will fix to fridge and follow instructions. I guess there is quite a bit of crud in the gravel - should I leave it until cycling is finished, or vaccuum out once syphon thing arrives?

Wait until the cycle is finished. The crud is your friend at the moment as it'll hopefully be decomposing and producing ammonia.