Dave's goldfish -Goldie is doing fine recovering from dropsy

OK, its been a week since my last update.

To briefly recap, one of my goldfish ("goldie", a fantail) got a very
bad case of pop-eye around mid-august. A severe case of dropsy
appeared overnight in early September. See past posts for more
details.

She has now been put back in the bigger 30 gallon tank with
her partner. She has been there for 3-4 days. The temps have
gradually been lowered from a high of 86-87 (when she was in a
quarentine tank), back down to the present 81 degrees in the big
tank. Before putting her back, I raised the big tank to 85
(gradually.)

She is showing no signs of dropsy, or pop-eye, or any other
disease symptoms. She is eating and pooping well.
I am monitoring her, and Wally her partner, very closely. I
would like to eventually get the water back to the mid-70's, but I
realize that that might not be possible.
Lots of aeration, and 2x daily monitoring of nitrates. 1x daily
of ammonia and nitrites. May eventually reduce these tests to once
or twice a week.
Currently doing 1/3 water changes every other day, but may soon go
to 1 every 3 days, as long as the nitrates stay very low. Making
sure that the water changes are at the same temp as the water I
remove.

This may be my final update, unless something significant (bad)
happens.

Conclusions:
NITRATES are as dangerous as ammonia and nitrites
Dropsy can _sometimes_ be stopped, even when advanced.
(but it takes $$ and a lot of work)
Dr. Solo is very good, with sound advice to newbies.


Final thhoughts: right now this newsgroup is in sad shape from
the trolling of the past year, here and in other fish & pond groups.
However, this and other groups may eventually "come back".
I know that some news providers keep text group messages for several
years. (Usenet-news goes back to 2004.)

So I've written these messages & updates in the hope that they
may prove beneficial to someone in the future, perhaps in a year or
two to come. If the info I have shared over the past month can help
someone else down the road, then that will be a good thing.

Dave123 (not my real name or email address)