FFS been sold a fish with finrot!

[TheLadyOfTheGreenKirtle]

prettty advanced too. ds will be devestated! should I call shop and complain?

Yes, and demand another fish.

Our fish had fin rot and it was grusome. I was naive and the shop sold me lots of expensive medicine to cure it.

ffs, just called them and all the lad said was yu need to treatr the fish and get the water tested. despite the other fish being fine and this one not at all well. we only got them on friday!

The fin rot will spread to the other fish and kill them. Remove the infected fish from the tank immediately and either kill it or return to the shop.

Thoroughly clean the tank by emptying it and starting again. Replace any weed and boil any stones/ornaments you have in it.

Don't bother buying expensive treatments. It's only worth treating much loved or valuable fish for these types of diseaes. Infected newcomers should never be kept in the tank, it's just now worth infecting the entire tank.

Make an official complaint to the store manager as they are obviously incompetent!

thanks. i will remove the infected fish now. should i kill it? (hate to do that but I dont want it to suffer any more than necessary)

Put it in a bag of tank water and take back to the shop. Have you got a spare bucket (and heater if tropical) you can keep it in overnight.

have moved it into my spare "cleaning" tank overnight. have explained to ds that he is poorly and might have to go to live in the raincloud with nemo (fish that these two were bought to replace) im really cross.

Our shop told me exactly the same thing....tested the water (fine) and we treated the fish (waste of time).

I think the poor thing would have been better off being put out of it's misery by the time it died it had no fins and was very black. Luckily it didn't spread to the other fish.

omg, black? the fish is almost entirely black. we assumed that was its colouring!

what sort of fish is it?

If you want to kill it, go to the chemists and buy some clove oil. Empty a good amount into a pan full of water and swirl the water around with a spoon until it starts going a whitish colour.

Next, add the fish. It will swim around for a few seconds then become unconscious. Once it's 'under' add some pure vodka. Leave for about an hour, then retrieve the dead fish and dispose of - bury in garden or wrap and throw into the bin.

This method is the most humane way of killing a fish.

Really?

Sounds horrendous.

I always thought flushing them down the loo might be quite fun for them. Like dying at Alton Towers.

thanks atomic. dh and i have agreed to take him to shop tomorrow.

he is a common goldfish, we told the assistant what size tank we had (so we could get 2) and he recommended these.

You can't flush a fish down the toilet - that is cruel as the fish simply chokes to death on the toxic wastes that are in the sewers. I can't believe you would think something so childish. Why are you in the pet section if you think so little of animals? On second thoughts, don't even bother answering that I can't be arsed conversing with somebody that brainless.

Greenkirtlelady - when choosing a fish always examine carefully the fish in the tank. If any of them look sick then don't buy any stock from that tank. Spend a good 10 minutes just looking at the stock in the tank to assess their health.

A healthy tank should have:

Clean water.
Fish that are active and moving around properly.
Fish that have erect fins and of a good colour.
No bumps, white fluffy bits, finrot, dead fish in the tank, sluggish fish, fish that are clearly unwell/dying.
If the fish are all looking well, then buy from that tank.
Try to buy fish from a specialist aquatic store if there is one in your area - doesn't have to be a large, flashy or expensive place.

If you empty the tank and start again and thoroughly clean everything you will have to do 50% water changes for the next few weeks to allow the good bacteria to build up again.

Not sure what the best course of action is to make sure the other fish doesn't get fin rot. I would probably be suggesting that you take them both back - especially if they have been sharing a tank. If you take them both back then you can properly clean the tank out then cycle it and get another couple of goldfish in a few weeks once the tank has built up good bacteria again.

Also, I've read in the past that the only really humane way to kill a fish is to chop its head off cleanly with a sharp knife. I am not brave enough to do this so I allow DP to take measures into his own hands if any of our fish get really poorly.

Er...it was a joke.

For the record, I have never flushed a fish down the loo, or swung a cat around the room to see if it's big enough for me to live in.

And I wouldn't actually like to die at Alton Towers.

As I mentioned earlier, I have always fought to save the lives of my pets, but if you want to get the clove oil out......

To add a wee bit further to atomic's post, some of the big fish shops have tanks with shared filtration. This means that the same water is in a number of the tanks, and if there are poorly fish in one of the tanks then the rest can also be contaminated. It's a good idea to buy fish from a shop where either the criteria mentioned by atomic apply to ALL of the tanks in the shop, or you can see that each tank has its own filtration system and the 'healthy tank' criteria apply to the tank you want to buy from.

bugger, there were some dead fish in all the tanks. they said it was because they were a new batch and some hadnt taken well. it was a specialist aquatic centre too feel so stupid now, i trusted them.

poorly fish is still going and not getting any worse (yet) is pretty still though.

other fish still seems ok.

fish has died. gotr back from supermarket and he was lying at bottom of tank.

fucking hell, ds will be gutted!

Damn, that's so annoying for you. If I were you'd I'd either return or kill the poorly one and remove the ones that look okay - set them up in a holding tank or something. If your fish are dying there's obviously something going on. You shouldn't feel stupid, it's not your fault this has happened.

It might be worth quarantining new fish in the future.

don't worry, just explain to ds that fish are quite fragile and these things happen sometimes. I'd sterilise the tank/ornaments/gravel if I were you. What kind of set up is it? tropical or cold? What remaining fish do you have?

Lady - can you name and shame the store? (if its not too much of a location giveaway) it sounds appalling.

it was ripples in telford. im so cross. think we will stick with the one fish weve got now for a while. need to steralise everything now.

its a cold tank with filter. the remaining fish is smaller and a common goldfish.

Right, just remove the remaining fish and pop it into a holding container.

Chuck out as much as you can afford to from the original tank - gravel, ornaments, weed etc. Only keep stuff you really need to and make sure they're well sterilised by either boiling or sticking in a milton solution (rinse well of course).

Scrub the tank out with water and salt if it's made of glass then rinse well and allow to dry in the sun. If it's plastic then wash and fill with milton solution.

If you want to treat your remaining fish with finrot treatment then do so, but it might be okay if it's healthy and has some natural resistance.

One really weird thing is that our local doctors surgery has a very large cold water tank with far too many goldfish in.

About 4 of the poor things are covered with damn boils and rotten bits and have raggy fins. The tank is obviously totally infected, but nobody ever seems to do anything about it!

It's like you go to the doctors and sit there looking at this tank thinking "I'm gonna end up like those fish and will probably die if I allow these jokers to look after me", after which you get up and leave because you feel so crap!