Goldfish

[Bruce]

Hey guys, over the last two months or so I've tried my hand at goldfish. My first attempt was a nice looking feeder comet that I wanted to save. He died in quarantine I believe due to my water parameters going out of wack. Second was a fan tail he broke out some sort of infection I ran meds through him but he passed shortly after seemingly clearing up. Lastly, I had an oranda. I was running the trio but halfway through he had anchor worm. I did major water change ran cyropro. This was supposed to be his last week on cyropro. He was a voracious eater seemed healthy but a little thin. He started to have swim bladder issues yesterday when he was still but when swimming was normal ate a lot. Today he died. Is there a secret to goldfish?

[gardenman]

Swim bladder issues are very, very common among fancy goldfish. As a general rule I like buying fish young and raising them up, but with fancy goldfish you're generally better off buying them as adults as many of the young fish will develop swim bladder issues and there's not a lot you can do about it. 

There's no real secret to keeping goldfish. Good water quality. Get healthy fish. Feed them right. Keep them in ridiculously large tanks/ponds. The longer body goldfish like comets, shubunkins, etc. tend to do better than the compressed body types like orandas, lionheads, ranchus, pearlscales, etc. 

An old pet shop in southern NJ called Tisa's in the 70s/80s used to have a tank of calico orandas in the front of the store that was amazing to look at. I tried recreating that a few years back by buying eight calico orandas as very young fish. Six of the eight went on to develop swim bladder issues as they matured. The two survivors did fine and lived about five or six years, but it was disappointing to have so many have swim bladder issues. I've pretty much given up on keeping the fancy goldfish. The compressed bodies have created so many swim bladder issues that the fish just aren't worth the trouble to me. You're seeing a lot of "short body" fish now becoming more mainstream in the aquarium hobby and I suspect that will lead to more and more swim bladder issues also. 

[Bruce]

Personally I like the long bodies better but around me it seems the only long bodied goldfish you can get are feeder goldfish and they never seem to make it

[Bru]

Sorry to hear about your losses. A lot of times Goldfish, especially feeders, are raised up in cramped conditions and are not in the best health. I've only owned one fancy Goldfish but I got him at a bigger size, which was a little more expensive but worth getting a happy/healthy fish the first go around. Hopefully you're not too discouraged, they're really a great pet if you can get a healthy one.

[Bruce]

Yeah I do feel kind of burned out on goldfish but I don't like quiting on a species.

[Bru]

8 minutes ago, Bruce said:

Personally I like the long bodies better but around me it seems the only long bodied goldfish you can get are feeder goldfish and they never seem to make it

My experience with feeder minnows is 2/3 or more would die on me within a short period of time, even while trying to medicate. So maybe with a few more efforts you can get a goldfish going. Then again if you're burned out maybe it's time for something different.

[Bruce]

Yeah I think I'll try my hand at another goldfish soon

[H.K.Luterman]

1 hour ago, gardenman said:

Swim bladder issues are very, very common among fancy goldfish. As a general rule I like buying fish young and raising them up, but with fancy goldfish you're generally better off buying them as adults as many of the young fish will develop swim bladder issues and there's not a lot you can do about it. 

This is such good advice, I wish I had thought of this waaaaaay back when I was trying to keep goldfish! I had the worst luck, but I was also buying very young ones. I actually got so frustrated I quit the hobby for more than a decade. 

[gardenman]

6 minutes ago, H.K.Luterman said:

This is such good advice, I wish I had thought of this waaaaaay back when I was trying to keep goldfish! I had the worst luck, but I was also buying very young ones. I actually got so frustrated I quit the hobby for more than a decade. 

Yeah, it gets frustrating. Jennifer Lynx, aka Sold Gold Aquatics on YouTube, stopped keeping goldfish because of these issues and she loved goldfish. I don't know what the cull rate on fancy goldfish is from birth to maturity, but I'd bet it's over 80% that don't reach adulthood healthy. If you get a healthy adult fish, you're generally going to be okay, but not many grow up healthy. It's very frustrating.