Black Patches on Goldfish

[jobie]

Hi to all.. I need ur help.. for Gold fish.. pano malalaman if may sakit sya.. kase meron akong gold fish.. medyo nangingitim yung mga fins & other parts of scales.. patcha patcha.. thanks.. and what solution should i apply.

[Blue]

Welcome to PALHS, Jobie!

I moved your post as a separate thread here so you will get more responses. The title has also been edited to reflect the actual issue with your fish.

The black smudges are ammonia burns. The only way to be sure of how high your ammonia level is by buying a test kit for that. I recommend test kits by API (Aquarium Pharmaceuticals Inc). A master test kit complete with pH, high pH, ammonia, nitrite and nitrate costs 1000 pesos and over. A separate kit for ammonia only ranges from 150-400 pesos depending on where you buy them from. We do need to determine your ammonia, nitrite and nitrate to know whether your tank's nitrogen cycle is complete or not.

Could you please tell us how big the tank is? What strain is your goldfish? Is it a singletail or doubletail? Photos will help us immensely to identify your goldfish. Knowing what your goldfish is, matters a lot since some variants grow too big for most tanks. For instance, comets, hibunas/common goldfish and shubunkins are all pond types. They grow to 12 inches and over therefore needing plenty of space to swim around.

Assuming your ammonia has indeed climbed dangerously as indicated by test kit, then what we can do is upgrade your tank size (if small), do more water changes and add plants (if your water changes are insufficient), cut back on feeding (if found to be overfeeding) and upgrade your filtration system (if inadequate). At the start of the nitrogen cycle process alone, your ammonia would naturally increase and is especially increasingly dangerous if your pH is on the high/alkaline side. Goldfish release an incredible amount of wastes especially when the temperature is high due to high metabolic rate. The wastes alone are the ammonia source and can be toxic especially if the bacteria that converts it to another highly dangerous substance, nitrite, is absent. You could ask your petstore or a friend who keeps fish for their established filter media. Make sure the sources are free of diseases. Once done, place the old filter media in the filtration system. Do not use detergents or hot water when cleaning your filter and filter media. All you need is clean them under tank water. If you do have to replace the filter media with new ones, get rid of a small portion of the old and worn-out media while retaining the rest. The filter media retain the beneficial bacteria needed to keep your ammonia and nitrite at a minimum thus preventing your fish from suffering intoxication by those substances.

It is best we concentrate first on your issue before we unload more information to make it easier for you to keep track of some issues. It can be overwhelming in the long run if I unload more information which may not become relevant to this situation even though they connect very well to your issue.

If you do have any more questions, please post them away and we'll be here to help.:)

Blue