fan tail goldfish problem

[chrismurray]

About 18 months ago i bought 3 fan tailed goldfish, two of which are much larger than the third, which i believe is female. for the past 2 weeks she is continually floating upside down, she has a pot belly and is much shorter, she seems to feed ok but after which she returns to floating upside down, what is wrong and what do i do, there is no segregation and they are purely treated as pets with no particular special treatment other than regular partial water changes.

[aquak]

You will need to provide much more information in order to get any help. Please fill out your profile so somebody here can help you. Also, here is a good site for goldfish as this particular site (at this otherwise busy forum) is not very active.

http://www.kokosgoldfish.invisionzone.com/forum/index.php

[Crys18]

I have just posted a reply to someone else having that problem. I don't have any idea what your tank conditions are or how many gallons your tank is but I'll tell you the same thing I told them.....

I have had that problem in the past with 3 of my fan tail calicos. They seem to be the most prone to this because all of them got it and none of my black moors did. I must warn you that I have tried EVERYTHING even called the vet to see if he could do anything about it. If it truly is a swimbladder disease or disorder then it's extremely hard to treat and any treatment would be better if you catch it ASAP. The good news is that sometimes bacterial meds work for this but it can take awhile. You can try Tetracycline (think that's how you spell it) or Paragon II made by Aquatronics. Follow instructions to a T on the latter as it is powerful medicine. The first thing you should try though is getting your water to be absolutely PERFECT. This is one thing the vet told me to do. Test your water and make sure everything is what it's supposed to be. If everything is good then but this might be the result of feeding too much as the "fat" kind of goldfish have winding intestines and food can get stuck in the digestive part of their stomach. When you feed him from now on, presoak any food you give him as this is also another cause for the blockage. They gobble up the food before it soaks enough in the wather and then expands in their stomach. They have no acids to digest the food better like we do so another thing to try that did work for me and the vet had advised me to do is this: Stop feeding him for a few days and see if the blockage comes out by itself. If you keep feeding him it could get worse because more food would pack up where the blockage is. If that doesn't work you can also try feeding him some frozen peas to help the digestion process move through smoother. Put them in a small bowl of water and microwave them until mostly thawed and then cut them into quarter peices for your fish to swallow. Take all the excess pea shells and things he didn't eat out of the water. The other alternative if you get really desperate is to call your vet (make sure he has experience with fish) and ask him to operate on him (Yes, you can operate on fish). Although this does ocassionally work, it can be very costly and I wouldn't reccomend it unless you have a very rare and expensive fish because of this reason and also it's not always effective. They take a needle and poke a hole in his swim bladder to let air out and then sometimes it would be back to normal although he would always be prone to get it once again. Two of my fish did recover for awhile after treating them with meds, fasting them and also trying the pea idea. The other died before I could figure out what it was. Two of them floated upside down at the top of the water and the other was sitting on the bottom of the tank. The one that died was one of the floaters. In your case chrismurray I would check and make sure you're not overcrowding your tank as this is another reason for this problem. Best of luck.