My second ghetto pond

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
wow, thats alot at thirteen, cant imagine your collection in the future.

Anyway, time for an update. Unfortunately its a bad one.
A couple weeks ago there was an unexplainable ammonia spike on the pool, but with bi-weekly waterchanges and daily doses of prime sally had been doing well... until a couple of days ago.
Now I am currently fighting to keep her alive.
She is in a very bad way; ammonia burns to her fins, gills, whiskers and some skin lesions to her back and belly.
Saturday afternoon i thought i had lost her, she was upside down and only using one gill but fortunately she has improved since then. She is now upright and swimming but Im not celebrating just yet.
Will update further and with photos as soon as i can.
 
Ok, a bit of background to whats been happening... Sally has been in this pond since january, i have done routine waterchanges every week, she has been fed the same food the whole time, ive tested the water every couple of weeks and its always shown up normal (ammonia and nitrite 0, nitrate 10-20). 3 weeks ago the ammonia test showed 1ppm, i immediately did a massive water change and added extra prime to detoxify the ammonia.

I was doing 50% changes twice a week and prime added daily, Sally was acting completely normal, the amm levels were lower so i decided to feed her, she ate the piece of fish as normal.
The next day when i went to check on her i noticed that she had regurgitated the food and was now looking unwell. had red on her fins and gills. Ammonia was at 1.3ppm so i did a 60% change and added 5 more kilograms of media to her filter.
This is her on friday.
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Saturday morning ammonia was at 0.9, she was swimming but floating to her side when she stopped. Still looking bad.
I did another 50% water change
You can see her fins are more ragged and shes got some skin peeling off of her back

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That night i walk in to see a fish keepers worst nightmare
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She was still alive, after i grabbed her fin or tail she would flip over and swim again, but i thought for sure that she would die within a few hours at most, only one of her gills was working. I gave up on her, had a can of jim beam for dinner and began to think if this whole hobby was worth the pain.
I kept checking on her throughout the evening and noticed the water was pretty cold. I thought 'F**k it, ill boil up some water to add to the pool, might as well give it one more shot.'

Warming up the water seemed to help a bit, she was swimming when i went to bed but i knew deep down that she wouldnt be alive in the morning.

Imagine my surprise when i check on her the next day and she swims straight towards me
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She still looked like crap though, but both gills were functioning and she wasnt upside down. WOO HOO

Did another water change, this time when i added the treated water back in i made sure it had been heated. She was stable throughout the day.
 
Monday morning (yesterday) she looked terrible! Her whiskers were decaying and red, left eye was red, fins and gills were fraying.
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Ammonia was 0.4 so another big waterchange was done. once again making sure it was heated before adding to the pool as to not shock her.
Any hope that i had that she would survive was once again crushed when i found her upside down that night, this time seeing just how bad the ammonia burns were becoming.
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I had another sleepless night, checking on her and flipping her back upright every couple of hours, each time thinking she would be dead.
At 5am when i went to do it once more, but she was swimming again.

This has been so draining for me, I want to do everything possible to save this fish and i dont know if its working or not.
So this is where were at today..
Ammonia is 0.3, i have pumped out 50% of old water and am currently heating new water up. Sally still looks like s**t, is swimming but is also floating to the side when she stops.
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Is there anything else i could be doing? I am truly trying my best here, im just not sure if its good enough.
Any advice would be apprieciated
 
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