I've had the rescue goldfish for a week now. Six of the twelve have died; all the survivors appear to be in either good condition or are visibly improving. On Monday, the temporary tank I was keeping them in sprang a leak. Last night, the canister filter in their new tank stopped working.
This morning I ran down to Daiso to get a new sponge filter and another bottle of bacteria to seed it. I also left the sponge from the broken filter in the bottom of the tank to hopefully pass on its bacteria.
You can see from this guy what bad shape the fish were in- it had black marks across both sides (bruises?) and lost most of its tail. It spent a few days resting near the bottom of the tank, but now is very active and a strong swimmer.
its really kind of pointless and difficult to try to sex some fish (often hard without opening them up and defeating the point if you like fish friends) but typically a male comet will have a narrower body and longer tail when grown while females will be a little more stocky with smaller tails
the tail loss could have been from poor water quality (infection) or others biting/bullying due to the overcrowding stress. the spots might have been older wounds from bullying that were possibly healing? hard to know without seeing.
but i am guessing this was the one who was taking it easy!
I think this school did the experiment where a goldfish is dipped in liquid nitrogen and then returned to the tank, where it "revives". A lot of the fish had fin and gill damage but I don't think it was fin rot because it's getting better on its own. But it could be, I don't know...
careful with the blue if they ever get invertebrate friends? it really messes w like, carapace and shell development when its in the water and its not /great/ for the fish over prolonged periods (its just worse for fungus)
but i'd bet the fins grow back. the gill damage, idk...
i would hope? the damage would only be inflammation from what they've undergone and eventually goes down, but like. if their lungs were frozen in liquid nitrogen, they may in fact be just damaged forever. which, again... comet goldfish! you can see what a menace theyd be released wild in ecosystems
oh wow thats very scary and i do not like it and if i were a child i would be Very distressed :x really all it proves is how resiliant a comet goldfish truly is
