New Arrivals - Ranchus!

Last Saturday, my mom and my brother were in San Antonio when they saw some ranchus at a pet store.  There are NEVER any ranchus down where I live and my mom asked if I wanted one.  After a lot of inner debate, I decided yes.  She bought two, though, in case one died on the trip, but both survived.  And they are incredibly cute!

They are quite tiny, I'd say the smallest one is about an 1" from tip to tip, but I'd have to measure.  Recently my mom suggested the possibility of the calico being a lionhead, as the white ranchu has a much sharper "tuck" on its tail.  It'll be very interesting to see what they grow up to!

Not sure on any names , but I'm gonna hold off on that until the QT is over, haha

Nano Vide and Phoebe

Everyone's doing okay so far!  Phoebe doesn't look like she feels good today... maybe because I forgot to turn off their tank light last night... D:

I'm pretty sure Nano's grown a bit!  His overall shape has stayed the same, but he's larger, as if someone took him in photoshop and used the transform tool to make him bigger, hahaha.  Vide is about the same size as the Medium goldfish you see in petstores, so Nano's getting there!  I'll upload some better pictures later.

Like I said, Phoebe's not feeling well today--usually she's swimming around.  It's really odd, though, this morning I found that there's a lot of debris floating around and the filters don't look like they're sucking up any of poo from the bottom... maybe I'll have to clean the filters again.  Or replace them with a couple of AquaClears! :D :D  Someday, someday....

An update and extremely disorganized thoughts

Phoebe's dropsy has gone down for now.  I'm getting her used to water with no epsom salt, then I'm going to put her back in the 75.  There's no doubt she'll revert soon, which kind of makes me feel like I'm fighting a lost cause.  Fish with dropsy don't have a good outlook, and treatment just kind of postpones the inevitable.  She's not acting weak or showing any signs of "death", which makes it feel wrong to euthanize her.  But I know probably later this year, I will lose her.

Nano is showing veeeeeery small signs of dropsy too.  The top of his body, right before the dorsal fin, looks "prickly" if you observe him really closely.  And I wouldn't be surprised if Vide had it too.  I'm unsure about both of them.  I will wait until it "gets worse" with Nano, then I can be 100% sure and start treatment.  It sucks, because Nano's like my baby.

Cogburn's had a lot of those bacterial spots going on, but that's my fault.  I keep missing his waterchanges by a couple of days.  That shouldn't make such a noticeable difference, but he's a big fish in a 26 gallon (which, according to online calculators, only holds 24 gallons) and working with minimums gives little to no room for error.  I hope that HE doesn't get a bacterial infection and starts to dropsy too.  Ugh.

In other news, I'm trying to find food that nobody will float on.  I feed my goldies BRAND NEW Pro-Gold that was soaked until the pellets fell apart and Vide STILL floated!  The only thing that they don't float on is vegetables and bloodworms.  Which isn't bad, but I would love to just plop some pellets in there and not watch Vide flip upside down or float to the top.

I want to focus on growing Nano again.  I think he's making good progress, he's starting to catch up with Vide, but he's not as big as he could/should be.  I want to feed him 3x a day again; this whole dropsy fiasco's made me skip a day of feeding them every so often--which is a no no with baby fish.

Lately I've been feeling like getting another reeeeally young small goldfish and to raise them to be nice and big.  But that's completely out of the question at this point in time, haha.

RIP Giovanni

Lot of sad things happening.

Giovanni died of dropsy today.  Though most likely she died during the night.  She was in terrible, terrible shape.  I should have put her down instead of letting her live through this.  I was too scared.

Phoebe's scales are lifting too, so I'll have to go through treatment with her.  I bought some meds from GFC yesterday; I just hope they arrive very quickly.  I can't imagine losing Phoebe.

Better and worse

Well, Giovanni's completely  recovered and went back into the 75.  Unfortunately, she started biting at Phoebe again.  But during the water change, I noticed her going at everyone else a little bit as well.  I'm starting to dislike her, just because she's making things complicated.

I really don't want to add a new set up.  I really really don't.

I remember being excited about the possibility of looking for a new ranchu.  I'll probably change my mind later, but honestly, 4 fish is looking like enough for the 75.

I don't know.  Hopefully Giovanni will get a grip and just behave. D:  Because if not, someone's going back into a 10 gallon.

Looking for a Ranchu

Once Giovanni is treated, once everyone gets along in the 75 gallon, once I can relax, I am going to look for...

A RANCHU!

I will either plan a strategic mission to nab a ranchu at PetSmart, ask them to order one for me, OR buy one from RainGarden.

I'd love to buy one from Goldfishconnection, but they're just waaaay to expensive.  And Goldfishnet is a little too expensive for me right now as well.  Raingarden has some cute ones.

But this will probably be months down the road.  Still, it's a little exciting to think about!  I used to think "Once I get to be a goldfish expert, I'm going to get a ranchu!"

Now, I'm still not an expert... but I'm going to get a ranchu anyway! :D

Update on Giovanni

I FINALLY set aside time to sit down and make a topic about Giovanni's dorsal woes, and got some answers!

This is how she was when I first saw her:


But here is her dorsal fin today, after salting up to .03% and keeping her water clean.

From what I've been told at Koko's, this is a bacterial infection, not a fungal infection as I thought.  It seems that this was either agitated or caused by her dorsal fin sticking out of the water.  I'm glad it's not something serious!