Goodbye Doodle

I have some unfortunate news, Doodle has passed away.

When I woke up this morning Doodle was acting very strange. He was near the top of the tank barely moving, just floating with the current. I went near him, but he swam to the bottom so I figured it couldn’t be that bad. I started to research this while at work today and found several reasons why this could be happening.

1. Overfeeding or bad diet can cause digestive problems. – I rule this out because Doodle was new and he didn’t eat much at all. Bubbles comes to the top to eat and would eat all the flakes before Doodle got them. I also hand fed Doodle because of this, so I know he only ate a flake or two since Saturday.
2. Swim Bladder issues – I rule this out because he had no problem swimming around until this morning. So unless he developed it overnight (which now I think he actually did) then it wasn’t this.
3. Dirty water conditions – I still think this is why. Bubbles was in that water for two weeks before Doodle, so Bubbles was used to the conditions, Doodle was not. With just Bubbles all I did was change the water once a month which was fine, but now that there was two I should take out at least 15% of the water each week.

I had Jamie run to the store and get two gallons of water and change it out because of #3. Doodle responded better for a bit, but didn’t recover. Jamie went to the store to get test kits for the water when my mother found Doodle behind the filter on his side.

So farewell Doodle, we barely knew ye. You were the best looking Telescope goldfish Petco had, sorry you had to go.

Off to Petco to get some test kits now, possibly a Doodle2 later tonight….maybe Doddle Jr or Doodler, not sure how the sequel name will go yet.

[UPDATE]

Jamie and I went back to Petco last night and grab a test kit and then headed home. We tested the water and the pH, hardness and nitrate leves were just fine. Nitrite was a bit high and the ammonia levels were a bit more on the stress than safe side.  We plan to change out two additional gallons of water this weekend before purchasing another fish. I talked with the people at Petco for a long time last night, going over everything. I learned that we did pretty much everything correctly and that it could have been anything that killed the fish. They said that it could have just been the fish itself and that it probably wasn’t anything serious that would affect the other fish. I tend to agree with them now, especially after Jamie read that Telescope Goldfish are the hardest goldfish to care for. They are not recommended for beginners (that’s what we are obviously) and that they are prone to disease and die more often than others.

So we think we may hold off on the Telescope Goldfish again, unless we use our second smaller tank for it by itself. We now have our eye on a Black Moor or Calico Fantail. We’ll see this weekend which one wins I guess.