My beloved oranda is dieing :(

[xchairity_casex]

My very first Oranda is sadley passing away he is 5 years old i got him from a neighbor who bought him from wal-mart and kept him with 3 other fish in a stinky dirty bowl and was going to toss him out if i didnt take them. all i had was a 20 gallon. he was the only surviver out of those fish. i made some beginer mistakes ALOT of beginer mistakes and it wasnt untill last year that i finally got things right moved him and 3 new goldies into a 80 gallon did 90 percent water changes every week and he was so happy and healthy. i always reffered to him as my mircle fish becuase he had been thru SOO much so many injuries from tank deco torn fins,nearly had his tail cut off from a sharp deco. even scewerd himself thru the mouth and out the gills from a fake gress plant. even crushed himself under a 4 pound rock i litterly thought he was dead as his body was mushed and bloody but he survived it all. and now he is suffering from a horrable infection dropsy and i have not been able to get a handle on this and he is just going down hill and very fast

i never thought i would cry over a fish but im crying over this one i really truly love this fish and its breaking my heart to see him going downhill

he was such a beautiful fish he grew up a total of 7 inches from nose to tail i really wanted to breed him with a beautiful female.
heres some pictures of him

i love you my beautiful mircale fish

 

[ReikiStar]

I'm so sorry dropsy has got the best of him. I completely understand how you feel. I treated myself and paid $40 for a lovely large but youthful black lionhead gold fish. I usually never pay that much for fish but there was something about him. He had a pink "spot" on his gill plate. I didn't think anything of it. It turned out to contain a witch's brew of bacteria. The spot grew larger and larger eating down to the cartilage. None of the meds I used worked. I found a local exotic vet who worked on fish. We started a protocol, left him at the vet so they could give him injections...cost $300. Took him home for a few days and the infection won. I was crying on the phone with the vet and bummed for the next two weeks.

It's always so hard to lose them when you've fought so hard. At least he knows how important he is to you...otherwise he wouldn't have made it this far.

Thank you for giving him a good and interesting life. I'm so sorry you're losing your beautiful friend.

 

[BorderKelpie]

I'm so sorry. He is a beautiful guy.

I have been considering trying my hand at some goldfish, but I am still a little unsure how to best care for them.
After seeing his picture, I have decided to really research them. I want one that looks like him.

I am sorry you're hurting.

 

[xchairity_casex]

@borderkelpie
im so sorry for your loss! ive been treating him with salt,warmth and meds and so far no good

@reikistar
this is the best goldfish website ever everyone is really knowledgable>> http://www.kokosgoldfish.invisionzone.com/forum/
goldfish really are not that difficult though fancies are prone to sickness. all they really need is good clean water,lots of space and good food kokos teaches you how to make your own fish food which i have done since its wat cheaper,easy and deff does a goldfish very good you can tell the differnace in there look in only a few weeks.

 

[watchdogps]

Are you certain it's dropsy? Are his scales sticking out?
If so, have you checked the water quality lately? I have seen drastic water changes turn dropsy around IF it was due to poor water quality and if it was caught early. Dropsy is actually from kidney failure (maybe liver, I'm not sure at the moment).

 

[ArkaFarmaMama]

Do you soak your flakes or feed pellets?
It could be bloat that makes them all weird, and they will eventually die!
I killed a few fancys before I figured it out.

QUICK, boil some peas and feed them to him in an isolated place in your tank
if you can. Just little bits of them, just two at first!
Might as well TRY!!! Saves mine when the get air in their bellies!

 

[xchairity_casex]

it was dropsy i do 90 percent water changes every week my water gets tested every week(day before the water change) everything was perfect 0 ammonia 0 nitrites and only 8 nitrates. PH was perfect. i moved him into a 20 gallon QT tank with a 400gph seeded filter going bare bottom tank 100 percent clean water did one hundred percent water changes daily to keep wastes down. he doesnt eat pellets or flakes but sinking gel food i make myself so they dont suck in any air.
but it was too much for him he is gone he tripled in size and it actually split his tummy open and was dark dark red underneath im thinking the infection caused somthing to burst inside of him. he was in obvious pain unable to swim just thrash. i did what i had to i used ambosol tooth ache reliver liquid and dripped it directly into his gills for 10 minutes he quite breathing after the first drop no pain no gasping no thrashing

God i loved that fish i will miss him so so much!

 

[itsy]

I was a fish moderator for some time on a popular site. I was their cold water fish "expert." I'm not a big fan of 100% changes, or even 75% changes. If the tank is not overstocked, feeding is controlled and regular partial water changes are done, it should be possible for you to keep your nitrAtes below 10 parts without being so drastic. When too much water is changed at once, there are other factors to the water that you do not test for that are changing drastically. PH is one of those things as are a whole host of other things that the fish are being forced to quickly acclimate to each time you change the water. If controlling nitrAtes is so difficult to need such large changes, I always recommend changing 25% more frequently, perhaps two or three times a week instead of one huge change at a time. Also - if you are testing with a strip kit, they are often unreliable and bring false results. A test tube kit is a little more expensive, but is much more accurate. There are definitely different schools of thought on this, but I would be remiss if I didn't tell you mine. Web forum to web forum seem to have differing opinions on how to change tank water and I'm just offering up another opinion.

I'm sorry to hear about your Oranda.

Is there any hope for the fish at this point or has it passed? Are you certain that it's dropsy? Like another person wrote, dropsy is almost always caused by water conditions. Dropsy also has very telling signs - the pinecone scales. There's really no mistaking it. It can still be treated for dropsy in a hospital tank, but the end result is usually the same. 5 years is a long time to have a fish. I know how hard it can be to lose one. I have a tank with some fish who are 6 and 7 and we have to move soon. I'll be packing them up like little babies.

Oftentimes the goldfish you buy from pet stores are inbred and come from less than perfect conditions. A properly bred goldfish can live for 20 years or more.

I had a goldfish that I loved a great deal who ended up dying on me. Sometimes, you do everything you possibly can and they still go. She was sick from the moment we brought her home and it didn't present itself until after QT. She almost killed all of my other fish with her illness and I spent hundreds of dollars on expensive medication to treat them all. Sadly, Sparkles ended up dying last year. Here's a video of her in her quarantine tank. I understand how you feel!

I really cried when that fish died!

 

[watchdogps]

Quote:
Yep, I have to agree with this. I was always taught never to do more than 50% changes at a time, even if the water quality was terrible. If it was bad, do small chnages every day if need be, but drastic changes risks shocking the fish.

Either way, so sorry about him, I too can relate to being attached to "a silly fish". We had some black skirt tetras and zebra danios that were 7 yrs old! and a plecostomus that was ten.

 

[carolinagirl58]

I have koi that I have had for many years. You do get attached to them. Sorry about your Oranda. Once they pinecone, it's pretty hard to save them. The pineconing is a symptom of organ failure going on. I have known of a couple of koi that were pulled through it, but it's rare. Salting the water to .03% will help make the fish more comfortable but it is unlikely to cure it.