Dying Goldfish : What's Up?

[Bill Moore]

To date since adding nine goldfish to begin fish cycling the system, I have lost four of them, and now two more are acting lethargic.  Water chemistry tested fine for pH, ammonia, nitrate, nitrite and phosphates. Water temp holding steady right around 70F. There are no visible signs of distress or disease.  They just end up lying dead on the bottom of the tank.

Any ideas on what is happening?  Suggestions appreciated. There

[TCLynx]

Were they the really cheep feeder goldfish?  Sometimes they are not too healthy to begin with.

Now you say you added the fish to start cycling but that your water tests fine?  How long ago did you add them?  Are you sure the water tests are working right? 

I would expect ammonia to be on the rise during initial cycle up.

[Bill Moore]

TCLynx...   added fish about 2-3 weeks ago.  Yes, they were cheap feeder goldfish.  Water chemistry progress can be seen in the photos I've put on the photo gallery.  Doubt that nine tiny goldfish would have raised the ammonia much in that time. The tests appear to be working correctly, again looking at the progression of photos over time.

[Bill Moore]

Think what I may do, if I lose the others is add ammonia and see if the biofilter is still cycling properly. I wanted to begin adding tilapia this month, but will hold off until I figure out what's going on.

[Sylvia Bernstein]

My guess is the same as TC, Bill. I've used cheap feeder goldfish in the past and always lose most of them in the first month. They just don't live long...

[TCLynx]

If you have your water temperature up and plenty of aeration and you are flooding and draining often (or running constant flood) and you start fishless cycling, I expect you could get through it in a few weeks.

FYI, if you could link to or post the particular photos into the discussion it would be easier for me to know which photos apply to this current discussion since simply looking at your photos I don't necessarily know which ones are from now and which ones are from before without doing much more detective work than I have time for in trying to help answer some one's question between other project's I'm working on.

[Bill Moore]

TC... here's link to My Photos gallery. Ammonia • Nitrate • Nitrite tests are labeled   ANaNi Test 1, 2, 3, etc.  Most recent is test 9.  Last few tests were on weekly basis, while earlier tests were every several days.  

http://aquaponicscommunity.com/photo/photo/listForContributor?scree...

[TCLynx]

Well it could simply be the cheap feeder goldfish or perhaps the high Nitrite a while back might have done them some irreversible damage (having fish in a system through a high nitrite spike is really hard on them though salting the system to 1 ppt may provide some protection to the fish.)  Nitrite is to fish kinda like carbon monoxide is to us air breathers, it bonds to the blood quicker than the oxygen and oxygen deprivation can lead to death.  In fish the nitrite causes what they call brown blood disease.

[Bill Moore]

Appears the fish have been dying of swim bladder disease. Some possible solution are: stop feeding them 2-3 days, then feed them a pea mash. Raise water temperature to 78-80F. Add Epsom salt. Think I will make a small tank within the tank, one that I can more easily heat and doesn't let them dive as deep.

[Japan Aquaponics - アクアポニックス 日本]

I know this may sound strange - but with these cheaper feeder fish they can sometimes just be very weak - I used 25 small ones in my micro system and now have 15 left - so we lost about 1 a day for just over a week.  One thing that killed a few (apart from general stress!)... was that they were too weak to swim away from my tiny pump in the tank... the little things got sucked onto the side of the pump and couldn't escape!  It sounds like that is not your problem - but maybe something to be aware of.

On a side note, I confess that just one of the fish I flushed down the toilet after it had died... only to have my 4yr old daughter come running out of the toilet after she came home from nursery bsaying that there was a fish looking at her bottom!  Guess it didn't flush so well!