Lemon Goldfish turning black

[pondy]

Hi I bought a young lemon goldfish which was 100% yellow, over the past two months it has turned totally black and this morning I found it dead. I am wandering whether the fact that the fish turned black indicated that it had a disease?

[Gill Catton]

Originally Posted by pondy

Hi I bought a young lemon goldfish which was 100% yellow, over the past two months it has turned totally black and this morning I found it dead. I am wandering whether the fact that the fish turned black indicated that it had a disease?

I'm not sure what this is but I remember we used to do behavioural experiments with goldfish at uni (just how they behaved towards different sized groups of daphnia - nothing nasty) and I ahemmm liberated a few and they all did this, went brown/ blcak and died (as did almost all of the rest of the batch apparently). I couldn't figure out what it was, it was very sad.....

[MalcolmX]

black colouration is the carp reverting to colour type the fact it is dead is not caused by the black

[doorframe]

Any fish dying is a shame. I've bred them for years, and had them stay black for years, before finally taking colour. When they are black, they are often referred to as 'chocolate' by the salesmen. It's a way for them to sell a fish as an exotic species..a total con!! They ALL take colour eventually!!! I've never ever had one go from coloured to black. If you do find out why this happened, please DO let me know.

[Lincs Yellowbelly]

I don't know about them ALL changing colour as we've got a few that have been brown for years but generally they do tend to go eventually. We had a white goldfish with orange spots, which after 2 years turned completly white in a week

[doorframe]

They ALL take colour eventually


I don't know about them ALL changing colour as we've got a few that have been brown for years

I should have said..."in my experience". . The longest time taken for one of mine is a fantail from my fathers pond, which has been in my ponds for 18 yrs, and only started to colour last year, and has been slowly changing to a yellowy/orange. Still has 2 brown areas around the dorsal. Dispite his age, he's still only around 8 inches, including the fantail!

[Gill Catton]

I'm not sure about the reverting in colour thing because it affected all of the goldfish (like 40) and it wasn't like a nice velvety blue/grey or chocolate grey of the natural colour it was patchy brown and then death even though housed separately eventually they all died....

[jezlee]

I have a very pale, almost white goldfish in my pond, as well as some dark brown ones which we bred ourselves (well, the fish did it really!) and they are turning orange now after a couple of years as dark brown ....

[clairabellx]

Originally Posted by pondy

Hi I bought a young lemon goldfish which was 100% yellow, over the past two months it has turned totally black and this morning I found it dead. I am wandering whether the fact that the fish turned black indicated that it had a disease?

Hi,

I bought 4 lemon yellow goldish on 9 Sept (daughter's birthday presents) and one developed white fungal spots. I went to Melbicks where I bought them and asked for advice. They said it was ich although I thought fungus, so I treated with a dual purpose medicine called Ichcide. Seemed to improve then the one turned brown, then black over head, fins and gills, eyes bulbous and body swollen. He died yesterday 9 Oct.

I recall when we bought the fish, the others in the tank looked a bit like scales were falling off and generally not as healthy as the 2 weeks before (you know how it is with kids, we went to check on 'our' goldfish for a few weeks before her birthday). I really shouldn't have bought them from there, as they didn't look great but she had been so excited - interestingly, when I went back to buy the medication, the tank had been emptied! They also tried to sell me more equipment (vacuum), telling me I was overfeeding and stressing the fish and needed to clean out the gravel more. At this point they had only been in the tank for 2 weeks, and I had bought the full range of 'settling in' chemincals to deal with the nitrogen cycle.

Now my 6 year old has a little fishy grave in the garden and asked me if Sammy was getting cold now the weather has turned!

I think it had a disease when we bought it, and that is why he changed colour and died. I am really hoping the others don't go same way - do you think it is a contangious problem?

Thanks

Clair

[Lance Morgan]

Here is a link to a site about fish diseases. It should have what you are looking for:

Disease Home