Color change and spawning

[scruffy]

This is about two issues. First of all my lovely yellow gold comet is turning white. This started happening a just a few weeks ago. I would say Timmy is getting pretty close to a year old and has been through several color changes over the past several months . Timmy is still a good looking fish, but I miss the old Timmy. Is there anyway this fading can be reversed?

Timmy lives in a 55 gallon tank with two other comets, a blackmoore, and a snail. This tank has been going about 6 months. I usually change at least 50% once a week. Yesterday, the ammonia and nitrite were nil, the PH was 7.5 and the nitrates were around 60. So I changed a little more water (maybe 75% - thank God their PH is up again!) and resolved to test the water more often. DO you think it's the nitrate, the PH going up or accidentally leaving the lights on a couple nights?

I am also beginning to wonder if Timmy is a girl. This evening, I noticed one of the other comets, Mick, was pestering Timmy as he or maybe she was browsing the gravel for tidbits. The thing is, I didn't see any love pimples around Mick's gill plates. I would guess that Mick is coming up to or has just passed his first birthday. Do male goldfish always develop the bumps when spawning? Or do you think maybe Timmy just found something that Mick wanted to chew on himself?


S

[Lady Hobbs]

nitrates were around 60

Holy Moly!!!!!!! I can't believe you have any fish alive in that tank.

You have got to get that nitrate down. It should never be more than 20 with 5 or 10 more like it. Vac your gravel very well and do another large water change asap.

[Lady Hobbs]

Nitrite / Nitrate poisoning is not a disease but will kill your tropical fish if not remedied. It results from having a large bio-load on the filtration system or from not performing enough water changes. Perform a partial water change immediately and monitor the nitrite and nitrate levels closely until the situation is resolved. You may have too many fish in the tank and will need to perform more frequent water changes. Nitrite readings on your aquarium water test kit (http://www.fishlore.com/aquarium-water-test-kit.htm) would indicate that your tank is still in the aquarium nitrogen cycle nitrite phase, or it is undergoing a mini-cycle if you've recently added more fish to the tank.

[scruffy]

I plan to test the water and change it again if it's bad. I also plan to rinse out the filters in the waste water. I had to start one of them by pouring some water into and there was way more junk coming out than any one bacteria colony can eat.

Besides the nitrates, which I know I need to work on, what about the questions I originally posted about? Do we have to have perfect water all the time to get any detailed help?

Thanks,

S

[Lady Hobbs]

Sorry I did not answer you to your liking. I answered what I thought the most important since high nitrates can kill your fish.

I do not know how goldfish spawn. Never had a goldfish.

[gm72]

Besides the nitrates, which I know I need to work on, what about the questions I originally posted about? Do we have to have perfect water all the time to get any detailed help?

Thanks,

S

You received excellent input from Lady Hobbs. Your other questions are irrelevant if you are unable to maintain healthy water parameters. Throwing an attitude at people trying to help you is not particularly a good idea. Great way to ruin reputation before you even begin. :ezpi_wink1:

That being said, your nitrAtes are the root of your problem. You are going to start losing fish if you don't keep them under better control. I would recommend that you perform larger water changes and test your water more frequently. With that stocking level you may need to be performing twice weekly water changes.

[scruffy]

Sorry, I got huffy about that. If someone invented a car that ran on nitrates, you would want to raise goldfish, lots of them. I tested the water and I want to say it was around 30 to 40. I just took every thing out, but the fish, hooked up the python, and gave the gravel a good cleaning. I changed about 75%. I'll test it again in a couple days and we'll see how it goes.

s

[scruffy]

Well I think I got it down to 20ppm. I found the API Nitrate to be kind of hard to read because 20 ppm and 80 ppm both look like a lighter shade of red than 60 ppm, thought the 20 might be brighter. It must be the lighting. Does anyone else have this problem? In the end, I did another partial water change.

S

[scruffy]

Well I think I got it down to 20ppm. I found the API Nitrate to be kind of hard to read because 20 ppm and 80 ppm both look like a lighter shade of red than 60 ppm, thought the 20 might be brighter. It must be the lighting. Does anyone else have this problem? In the end, I did another partial water change.

S

Got it down to 20 ppm Whoo Hoo!