I Kills the Fish

A week and a half ago my neighbor asked me to take care of her fishtank, for she and her daughter where going out of country for a couple of weeks.

Everything went smooth until today when I walked in and found the largest of the three fishes dead.

http://www.rockwells.net/lemmikit/lajit/fish.jpg

It was floating there on it’s side and was covered in white slime, it’s tail still twitched a little. To say the water smelled bad would be a great understatement… I replaced a little over half of it, but the tank still looks pretty fucking bad. Hopefully the other two tiny ones will be able to survive.

I’m trying to figure out what killed the fish, I am quite sure it was purely my fault me being the newb fish feeder and all… not that I got any other instructions other than “drop some food for them”. Water on the tank was quite warm, but I suppose I just overfed the dead one.

So RIP you bloated water animal and hopefully the other two tiny ones will still survive in that retched water.

Man I am never gonna buy a fishtank.

If that’s an accurate pic it’s a goldfish and they’re cheap. Just replace it. We won’t tell.

And you don’t have to lie to us either. If you’re that hungry, buy your own fish dinner!

In case you really didn’t murder the poor thing for the protein, I suggest you check the filter and pump. You shouldn’t need to change the water more than once a month unless the filtering system is broken.

Good Luck & R.I.P. Goldie!

Goldfish it was… It is possible it suffocated because during the last couple days I’ve noticed that it was very sluggish at it’s motions and was rapidly gulping the water, the way a hyperventilating human would try to swallow air. I had to tap the pump hard to get it going again after I took the dead fish off the tank, it was making weird noises and didn’t really recycle the water at all (perhaps the slime from the dead fish and/or food debris was jamming it).

I’ll buy them a new goldie if they want one, but after reading about them I believe the tank might be too small for a goldfish and several other fishes together (it’s a 100 liters max, if that).

I’ll pour out a little Colt 45 for our fallen comrade.

I love this site’s new format. There’s a “Flameout” advertisement next to the posts in this thread. This is funny stuff.

[quote]Mr. Clean & Jerk wrote:
I love this site’s new format. There’s a “Flame-Out” advertisement next to the posts in this thread. This is funny stuff.[/quote]

Holy Carp batman you are right… that is funny, just that I don’t know why.

[quote]Mr. Clean & Jerk wrote:
I love this site’s new format. There’s a “Flameout” advertisement next to the posts in this thread. This is funny stuff.[/quote]

For the past two weeks I had my cousin’s fishbowl sitting on top of my counter right next to the bottle of fish oil caps. Just to keep the scaly fuck in line. He actually did seem to get agitated whenever I opened it.

lol, reminds me of the time when i looked after my friends hamsters, one of them did a great escape somehow from it’s sealed plastic cage, jumped from the piano to the floor, crawl out under the door… i was woken to the sound of my 3 predatory cats fighting over its corpse, luckily my friend saw the funny side- the cats had fought to a standstill, leaving the body untouched

[quote]R@NE wrote:
Goldfish it was… It is possible it suffocated because during the last couple days I’ve noticed that it was very sluggish at it’s motions and was rapidly gulping the water, the way a hyperventilating human would try to swallow air. I had to tap the pump hard to get it going again after I took the dead fish off the tank, it was making weird noises and didn’t really recycle the water at all (perhaps the slime from the dead fish and/or food debris was jamming it).

I’ll buy them a new goldie if they want one, but after reading about them I believe the tank might be too small for a goldfish and several other fishes together (it’s a 100 liters max, if that). [/quote]

If the water smells and the fish looked like it was trying to breathe hard, the filter probably is jammed. Try unclogging before their other two fish die.

But i wouldn’t worry too much. Goldfish are cheap and pretty fragile too.

The smaller fish need less oxygen, so they can hold out a little longer, but not by much. Next time you feed them, take care of the filter.

It sounds to me like a type of fungus. Buy some fish slime stuff and follow the directions. You can get a bottle for around 2-3 dollars. It keeps the fish slimy which makes them resist disease better. You might need to check the filter and also do they have any sort of filtering animal, bottom feeders, or snails or shrimp?

Replacing the water was a good idea, try to use distilled water. If you can’t, use water that has been sitting out for a day or so, the pollutants should leave the water by then.

Do they have one of the rock vaccuuming things? It might be a good idea to see. Do they have a testing kit for testing nitrates and amonia? If they do, the directions are pretty simple on the boxes.

Yup I managed to get the pump going well by tapping it a few times. There was some green gooze I poured into the water to neutralize it. The neighbour will be back in a couple days so thankfully the problem is out of my hands.