sick fish

I lost one of my goldfish yesterday - the lovely fantail. I had been a bit worried about it for a few days - it had just become a bit subdued (sounds a bit daft when describing a fish), but it used to lie on the bottom of the tank with its head in the corner, although it did come out for food, and would swim round for periods.

Anyway, yesterday it started to swim a bit funny, sort of on its side a bit. I did a decent water change although the water was fine, put a bit of melafix in for good measure, and put the bubbles on to give a bit more oxygen, but this morning it was dead.

There were no marks at all, no swellings or anything. Any ideas what might have been happening to it and if its likely to affect the remaining fish? I'll get him a little playmate when I know he's ok.

Ah, thats a shame carole. By the sound of it yoiu did all you could. Could perhaps have been swimbladder problem? Give the other little fella some veggies, and I think you can buy swimbladder treatments from the lfs. I think there might be some info on swimbladder in the fish diseases section - might be worth having a read.

Ah no that's a shame Carole.

If there was nothing clearly visible, then it could've been some kind of internal bacterial infection. Fish tend to go downhill quite fast with those and there's not much you can do about it unfortunately.