lethargic goldfish - new tank....

Far too many fish, far too quickly and far too small a tank!!!
Your filter is brand new.... not good mate.
unless you fed the tank fish food for the 2 months before the fish went
in.... then there will be very very very few waste processing bacteria in
the tank.
Not good now they have to take care of 8 fishes poo!!

The fish that looks bad/sick....
he's your canary
the rest of the fish will follow quickly

you have set yourself up a nightmare.....
to solve it
1) feed very lightly
2) partial water change every 1 0r 2 days (remove prob 50% of water)
3) don't clean filter until flow slows (and then only squeeze out in a
bucket of aquarium water)

I am glad I am not in your shoes anyway!
Research 'new tank syndrome'
and prepare for ammonia/nitrite hell

In 3 weeks time
if all goes well
you'll be able to change to 1/3 partial water changes every week
but until that ammonia/nitrite drops......
gotta dilute to save ya fishys!
gasping and sitting on bottem are bad bad signs!





"EA" wrote in message
oups.com...
Hello,

We've just purchased 8 goldfish and put them in a 50 Litre tank. The
tank had been filled for about 2 months, and there are plants in there
too. We have a filter that ran for about an hour before the fish were
put in the tank.

We also used "water ager tap water conditioner" before we put the fish
in.

7 of the 8 fish seem very happy - they swim around a lot and rush to
the the top when we feed them. The 8th seems to sleep a lot and move
quite slowly - although he does move occasionally. He likes to suck on
rocks and then spit them out as well.

I am worried that he is sick - we've only had him a few days but I am
still very worried.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

EA