Pet Forum / Aquaria / Goldfish / September 2007

OK,  its been a week since my last update.

To briefly recap, one of my goldfish ("goldie", a fantail)  got a very
bad case of  pop-eye around mid-august.  A  severe case of dropsy
appeared overnight in early September.  See past  posts  for more
details.

     She has now been put back  in the bigger 30 gallon tank  with
her partner.  She has been there for 3-4 days.  The temps have
gradually been lowered from a high of 86-87 (when she was in a
quarentine tank),  back  down to the present 81 degrees in the  big
tank.  Before putting her  back, I raised the big tank to 85
(gradually.)

    She is showing no  signs  of dropsy, or pop-eye, or any other
disease symptoms.  She  is  eating and pooping well.
    I am monitoring her, and Wally her  partner, very closely.  I
would  like to eventually get the water back to the mid-70's, but I
realize that that might not be possible.
    Lots of aeration, and 2x daily monitoring of nitrates.  1x  daily
of  ammonia  and  nitrites.  May eventually reduce these tests to once
or twice a week.
   Currently doing 1/3 water changes every other day, but may soon go
to 1  every 3 days, as long  as the nitrates stay very low.  Making
sure that the water changes are at the same temp as the water I
remove.

    This may be my final update, unless something significant (bad)
happens.

    Conclusions:
           NITRATES are as dangerous as ammonia  and nitrites
           Dropsy can _sometimes_ be stopped, even when advanced.
                (but it takes $$ and a lot of work)
           Dr. Solo is very good,  with sound  advice to  newbies.

Final thhoughts:   right now this newsgroup  is in  sad  shape  from
the trolling  of the past year, here and in other fish & pond groups.
However, this and other groups may eventually "come back".
I know that some news providers keep text group messages  for several
years.   (Usenet-news  goes back to 2004.)

    So I've written these messages & updates in  the hope that they
may prove beneficial to someone in  the future,  perhaps in a year or
two to come.   If the info I have shared over the past  month can help
someone else down the road, then that will be a good thing.

                      Dave123   (not my real  name or email address)