i have a gold fish that i won at a carnival .. i ran out of fish food and i have been using lettuce. for about 3 days now it has been swimming upside down. and i don't know what to do. its not dead because it is still swimming, just upside down. what can i do?
feed it cooked pea shells
How much did you feed it? This goldfish looks like it was overfed to the point where it got swim bladder disorder , and now it can't freely control it's orientation of swim because the swim bladder is infected.
Goldfish are carp. In the wild, they are opportunistic feeders and readily overfeed because they don't know when their next meal will come. Sometimes carp see a predatory fish and hide for a few days till it leaves. This is fine because healthy adult fish can easily go a few weeks without food.
In tanks, if you keep overfeeding your goldfish, it will readily keep eating out of instinct, but repetitive overfeeding leads to the fish's swim bladder going out of control and the fish not being able to freely control its orientation of swim.
pets question and answers,www.5d2d.com To save your fish:
- Make sure it's in a big enough tank and in clean water. Poor water quality can also cause swim bladder disorder. For a juvenile, a 10 gallon would be okay for a few months provided you can keep upgrading to something like a 55 gallon, at least.
- Starve it for three days.
- After three days try to feed the fish shelled peas. Buy frozen peas, put them in the microwave and then remove the shell. Chop them up and try to get your fish to eat them. Peas work as laxatives on fish and if the damage to the bladder isn't so severe it can help.
Fish with swim bladder disroders can generally stay alive for many months but they suffer. Owners who can't fix the problem generally opt to put the fish out of its misery.
Turn the bowl upside down, I'm afraid it might be to late though. However sometimes goldfish use this tactic as a camouflage.
dont listen to the other answer at all! gold fish down swimm upside down if they are health i recemend swiching to peas mush them though your goldfish has swim bladder meaning u over fed him so fast him for 24 hours then feed him mushed peas
