Non Puffer: Ryukin GF belly up in under 24 hours :(

[J-P]

My Calico Ryukin GF (male) went belly up today or late last night.

I fed them at 7:00 as usual, the fish were eating fine. I went to turn on the lights today 3:00pm and no Calico ... I found it at the bottom of the tank belly up, labored breathing and the SAE munching away at him.

Tank Perams:
Ammonia 0.0
Nitrite: undetectable
Nitrate: Off the scale.
Temp: 75F

Tank Changes:
Because I had a pinhole leak earlier this week, I had to drain about 100 gals of water and re home a few fish. My little Angel went in with the GF, pleco in the 210 section and SAPs in the 210 section for a week. Prior to that, I was getting ready for a larger puffer and took out 70% of the plants in the tank. Possibly why the Nitrates spiked recently. The SAPs were taken out of the 210 and put back into the 55 section. All other fish remain in their temp homes.

All other fish seem to be doing fine with healthy appetites. I am wondering if one of the pellets I fed the little guy was bad.

I'll be doing a series of 25% water changes 2x daily for the next few days to get that Nitrate down, but that tank is going to undergo a major overhaul.

At the moment he is in a 10 gal quick set up hospital tank with an aquaclear HOB filter and a sponge filter. I set him in a breeder net to keep him closer to the surface if he has to gasp for air (and warmer). Treated the hospital tank with the appropriate amount of Paraguard and Epsom salts.

To be honest I don't expect him to live through the night.

Has anyone else experienced a "sudden" death that seemed to come out of nowhere?

[purplecandle]

Ah, sorry to hear that..you have some beautiful goldfish..

I wouldn't think it is the pellets, I would be more inclined to think it was all of the other stuff you did. Not that any one thing was bad..but all of them put together might have been bad thing.

You did a 100 gallon water change..any chance there was a ph or other water issue besides the nitrates?

Once I saw a fish breeder putting in goldfish stock at a Walmart...so just dumping them in.

The large ones went belly up right away and then 30minutes later they started to recover.

I asked why, and the guy said that the larger ones always have trouble going into new water..of course that is BS..they probably have issues with the water chemistry..but, the point is that the larger ones seem to have the most trouble with those chemistry issues..

Sorry I can't help more!

[J-P]

no not PH ... we are on well water.. Temps maybe, but I usually add it slow enough to keep the heaters from over working.


The ONLY other think I can think of is that "mighty puddy" that may have contaminated the water. Most was removed but there still remains a bit that held the seam together at the top.
It said "do not use on a potable water source" yet recommended for plumbing... go figure... Of all the fish I have in that tank, I thought the SAPs would show the fist signs. They are happily in the 55 section and doing what they normally do.. "hide and seek" for food.

On hind sight ... I feed my angle fish flake food and chiclid pellets... he / she is in the same tank ad the GF also... I wonder if that could have been an issue also.

[J-P]

update:

One eye is fully blood pooled and bleeding the other is fine. Sill breathing but very shallow.

[J-P]

Woke up this morning and he was a gonner... half the scales on one side of his body were totally stripped off.

[Dadof4]

Sudden water pressure change?

[J-P]

Not sure...

apparently I don't have an SAE in the tank but a CAE which are known to attack GF.

[Flutter]

You already knew that though... Those guys were munching on the SAPs when you first got them...

[J-P]

I didn't know I had a CAE ... thought it was an SAE ... and I really don't have a home for it other than a guppy tank or one of my snail tanks.

[xrayjeeper83]

sae?

[J-P]

Siamese Algae Eater vs Chinese Algae Eater

[xrayjeeper83]

oh ok got ya

[Nick]

I noticed while working at the fish store that the more distorted a body a type of goldfish has, the more often they meet a sudden and strange end.

Koi usually get bought even by tiny pond owners, then move from pond to pond and live until killed by repeated stunting. If not stunted, the major cause of death is generally clear and typically related to living outdoors, be it infectious or predatory.

"Common" goldfish either die from stunting in tanks or small ponds, or fall prey to outdoor hazards like koi.

Shubunkins generally live similar lives to commons.

Once you're to ryukens, the body shape is very distorted. All sorts of things can go wrong, similar to how purebred dogs which have a feature the breeders have exaggerated too far may suffer problems either directly related to the feature, or unfortunately genetically tied to it. If you think inbreeding and ignoring important long term characteristics is a problem in dog breeding, it's way, way worse at a goldfish farm.

Most of these fish are kept under such poor conditions that they are killed off long before any inherited defects might reveal themselves, so it doesn't really matter at all to the farm breeders or 99% of their customers. Black telescopes, a very popular fish, often go nearly or totally white/silver much past 6" long. In fact, the only 8"+ ones I have seen (online, just the two in a 75 gallon) are quite a pale white. But since the fish being bred are smaller than that anyway, and really none will live to change, the factory farm doesn't have to worry about these late life color shifts.

That's a totally benign trait, but fatal defects can occur at seemingly random times throughout life of any overbred fish, and it's more common in the greatly distorted physiology of a ryuken or it's tubby goldfish cousins.

Some I suspect have it worse off... the lionheads with no dorsal fin, I've never seen them get near the size they should. The ones with the bubble of fluid under their eyes must live in a smooth world, and will still often die of infections caused by other fish or just bumping something too hard. The pearlscale goldfish have the roundest, most distorted body of all, whats the biggest one of those anyone has seen? Not big even by fancy goldfish standards, and they have a reputation as heartbreakers among goldie people, because if you take proper care of one, a strange and sad end is essentially guaranteed down the road.