Does anyone have any idea what is wrong with my goldfish?

[AmpleBosom]

We bought a 3 fancy goldfish about 4 weeks ago, we purchased the tank first and ran it for 2 weeks as suggested etc.

One of the gold fish has been acting a bit odd this last week, it keeps hiding in the pineapple in the tank (Think sponge bob!) and hiding at the very top corner of the tank. I have also noticed a string of something hanging from the end of it's tail/back fin that looks like a thread of mucus - don't really know how to describe it. The thread has got a bit thicker and longer over the week. It is hard to look at it properly because it keeps hiding .

I've been googling and have come up with anchor worm but the pictures don't look the same.

Has anyone got any ideas?

I can think of a few things that might have gone wrong.

Firstly what tank do you have? Is it that spongebob 10 litre one? If so, it is waaaay too small for any fish really but especially goldfish as they grow very large and are messy fish. For 3 fancy goldfish I would suggest a tank of at least 40 gallons (180 litres) long term.

You said you left it for 2 weeks as suggested- unfortunately this is not long enough. It takes about 6 weeks to do a proper fishless cycle to prepare a tank for fish. This information is not usually given at pet shops for one reason or another, this is why I would always recommend doing your own research (on the internet because many books contain out-of-date practices that are now considered cruel).

Do you have a water test kit?

Thanks for replying sweetnitanitro, did have a look round on the internet first before buying but obviously not well enough.
The man in the shop seemed really knowledgable and suggested we set the tank up first fot two weeks and used a kit which helped to get the cycle going. I avoided buying from another shop which had told me that we could put fish in straight away.

The tank is 21 litres and we do plan to get a bigger tank at a later date when we've got the hang of things. The advice with the tank was that it was suitable for 4 fish so i thought 3 would be ok. The tank has a pump/filter to clean the water and we used water conditioner etc when we set it up.

I haven't got a water testing kit but can certainly get one, i thought i only needed one of these if the tank was a tropical one.

Any advice you can give me would be great, i obviously want to look after the fish properly and if you can suggest any good websites i'd be really grateful as the advice seems to vary alot from one site to the other

TBH you would be better off getting a bigger tank as soon as you can. They do take longer to do water changes for but they are actually much easier to look after than small tanks once you get them all set up. I'm constantly faffing with my 60 litre tank but my 180 litre is much more relaxing

You are right about info varying from site to site. The main problem is that the aquatic hobby is still in its very early stages really so a lot of info is based on personal experience. For this reason it's best to join a forum rather than just read an article, then you can get a few different viewpoints. There are some good articles available that will give you the bare bones of the scientific info though. This is a good one about the nitrogen cycle- LINK

You will still need a water test kit for a coldwater tank, especially since yours is still going through the cycling process. Ammonia and nitrIte are bad news for fish so you'll need to monitor the levels to keep your fish healthy. It's pretty easy to do, even the liquid test kits (which are a bit more fiddly but much more accurate than the dipstick tests). Ebay is your friend when it comes to fish-related bargains

This article has some info about goldfish care, the size chart is based on common goldfish but you can expect your fancies to get to around 8 inches long so they're not much smaller.

Hope that helps a bit!

That's great thankyou, weirdly after hiding in the pineapple all day this thread thing has gone! However it has been really useful to get some advice.

I'll go and get a water testing kit in the morning and start looking at the big exciting tanks

I don't know much about fish but I remember when I was younger, my goldfish often had the clear mucus thread thing you were talking about, usually before or after a big poo! Sometimes it would be half clear / half poo, if you see what I mean. It never seemed anything to worry about, I always just presumed it was how they do their business, to be honest!

This might help a bit AmpleBosom:

www.kokosgoldfish.com/GoldfishPoop.html

MrsL123 honestly i am laughing my head off not because i think it was probably just poo, how embarrassing!!!

Well at least i understand things a bit better now , thankyou

lol

Saying that though, the fact that it was around for a while suggests the fish is probably a bit constipated. Have you changed their food? Maybe they've got house-moving stress lol!

Constipated fish, I love the variety on this forum

I think you are right, i've had a google and had now fed my fishies some shelled peas and am going to do a partial water change and hopefully that will do the trick.

Thankyou both for replying