I have had fancy goldfish for just over a year now, and have had quite a lot of ups and downs with them. I believe that the downs have mainly been my own fault but to be fair, I got over excited at some point and tried to rescue any fancy goldfish that I found, that needed a new home. This led to partly too many fish, many potential parasite infestations, bacteria and even bad fish that would never make it anyway. I also started out with a very over decorated tank, and had to gradually remove all the driftwood, rocks, plants and much more that the fish ended up getting hurt on
So I decided to restart the tank from scratch and do it properly this time. I have learned a lot of things during this last year, especially when it comes to filtration, and I wanted to incorporate them all into this new setup.
First step was to move the fish over to a treatment tank, where I would treat them for gill flukes. I brought in a 530 liter (140 gal) tank that I didn’t use, filled it with tank water, and moved some of the filters over, from the larger tank. This needed no cycling or waiting. the filters were setup and the water was taken straight from the main tank. This is one of the advantages of running multiple smaller filters instead of one large one.
The fish had been gasping, yawning and flashing slightly so even though I can’t diagnose the flukes, because I don’t have a microscope, I have a strong suspicion that it has to be flukes. I treated with SEACHEM ParaGuard for 3 weeks as per the instructions. This is a mild medication against parasites, that does not substantially affect the filter or the fish (although it is not great on snails). I had to treat every day for 3 weeks, so I decided to only have the tank half filled during the treatment. This would cut the medications to half, and the fish seemed to do great anyway. I have 4 filters in it, so ammonia and nitrites got broken down fast, but I did choose to do water changes every 4 days though, just to keep up with nitrates.
Today is the last day of treatment, so I plan on filling the tank up all the way, so that they can have some more space, while they are waiting for their big tank to get ready. I my next post I will try to describe the filters that I am trying to build in the big tank. When they are ready, it should be pretty straight forward to move the fish over. My guess is that the fish should be in the new tank, within a week or so
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