Help!!! My goldfish is losing his scales? What to do?
I have recently rescued an aquarium from someone who was not taking proper care of his fish. It is a 20 gallon tank with 2 common goldfish and a weather loach. This is all very new to me and I am trying to read as much as I possibly can about how to take proper care of these amazing fish. Throughout the entire ordeal of getting them to me, the water temperature has gone up and down a lot as they moved from place to place. I am awaiting a master test kit in the mail so I can make sure that the water is being treated properly. Anyways the small goldfish and the Loach seem to be quite fine and almost relieved. The bigger goldfish (about 2″ long) is losing his scales. I know he had some missing scales to begin with due to fighting with other fish that are no longer alive. In the past week he seems to have lost some more scales on both sides of him. I have no idea what to do and I really do? Is it possible the little one is attacking him? Any ideas here would be great.
Forgot to mention that he seems to have less energy and does not get as excited when I come near the tank
I have posted a picture that you can take a look at. Sorry it is not the best quality but you can see some of the scale loss.
http://images.channeladvisor.com/Sell/SSProfiles/53000046/Images/3/P1010530.JPG
My goldfish is not that old. Maybe a year but no more so it is definitely not age. The filter is a AquaClear 20 Power Filter
http://www.animalworldnetwork.com/aqmpofi110v.html
He does not seem to be getting any worse so that is good. Should I be doing frequent water changes?
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get a hole ready in ur backyard
aww this is sad..
this is normal in goldfish when they get older they start to lose a lot of their scales
this happened to my fish too. he is a fantail. he/she was bleeding a bit i think (well, it was blood red in small patches). i separated him and now, 2 months later, he has grown heaps and i have now gotten him a friend =] he still has a few missing scales, but as you can imagine, they take a while to grow back. i would wait a little bit. i have searched the internet and cannot see anything about a disease of this description. i would wait, they might still be growing back. if you want, you could put him in another tank, but i really dont think this will help. the only thing you can do really (unless you find a disease discription) is wait. mine has pulled out of it fine, yours should too.he’s not missing many, that’s a good thing. lets just wait and see, eh? good luck =]]
It could be stressed or perhaps a parasite.
Do you have a filter with the black beads in the filtration system?
A lot of muck grows in there & parasites start to form in those beads.
You will be able to get a parasite cure from petshop
It doesn’t look all that bad, really. He looks basically healthy other than the missing scales. With that said, the fish has certainly been under a lot of stress with the moving and it is likely that the fish’s immune system is also being compromised in addition to the scale loss. What I am concerned about is that the areas without scales may be prone to picking up a bacterial infection.
You have 2 options: Add aquarium salt, or do more frequent water changes to keep the bacteria at bay. NOTE: The first option will require that the goldfish and the weather loach be separated, since the weather loach is scaleless and will not tolerate added aquarium salt well. It is the better option of the two, but may not be something you can manage if you only have one tank.
If you can manage the salt treatment, here is what you do: Add some aquarium salt-about 1 tablespoon for each 5 gallons of water. For your 20 gallon tank, you will need to make sure to subtract from that 20 gallons anything that isn’t water, including air space at the top, ornaments, and gravel. If you have plants in there, I would take them out to make sure they aren’t harmed by the salt.
Because you will from time to time have fish in need of special care, I strongly advise you to look into purchasing equipment for a “sick tank” for use when a fish needs medical attention.