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There are essentially three reasons your goldfish are gasping at the surface
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One is lack of dissolved oxygen in the water. Two is high levels of ammonia, nitrite or nitrates
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And three is a goldfish has a pest or disease that's affecting its ability to breathe
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In this video, I'll tell you what you can do about all three. Hello friends, welcome back to the channel. If you're new here, my name is Richard and I'm the
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owner of the fishkeepinganswers.com website and I've been keeping, breeding and writing about
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goldfish for nearly 30 years. So as I say there are essentially three reasons your goldfish may
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be gasping at the surface and in this video I'll address how we deal with all three. But first of
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all let's talk about why they're gasping at the surface. Typically people believe the reason they're
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gasping at the surface is they're trying to get oxygen from above the water from the air above
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and in fact that's not true. The way oxygen dissolves in water is the higher concentrations
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at the top, lower concentrations at the bottom. So when the goldfish are gasping at the surface
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they're actually just in the zone that has the highest amount of dissolved oxygen. So the first
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reason your goldfish may be gasping at the surface is due to the lack of dissolved oxygen in their
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water. So what happens in aquarium water is the fish absorb oxygen and give off carbon dioxide
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At the water surface, there is an exchange of gases between the water and the air above
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Carbon dioxide is typically released into the air above and oxygen is absorbed into the water
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so the fish can then use it Other sources of dissolved oxygen are typically the plants which is why I keep plants in all my goldfish tanks During the day the plants absorb carbon dioxide from the water and release
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oxygen. Now the best way we can increase the amount of oxygen in our goldfish tanks is through surface
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movement. Almost all filters these days provide surface movement whether that's a canister filter
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a hang-on-back filter or even a sponge filter. It's all about the surface movement. The greater
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the surface movement the greater the amount of oxygen can dissolve in the water the greater
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the the level of gas exchange that can take place. So to increase the amount of dissolved oxygen in
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our water we typically need to increase the amount of surface movement. One of the simplest ways to
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increase surface movement is just to add an air stone to the tank. An air stone connected to an air
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pump will release bubbles into the tank day and night and although some of those bubbles will
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will slightly dissolve in the water, releasing some oxygen, is actually the surface agitation
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that we want. I typically run airstones in all of my tanks, whether they're goldfish, tropical
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puffers, the lot. I keep one in almost every single tank. If you're running your tank with
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a hang-on-back filter or a canister filter or even an internal power filter, you can typically
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adjust the output to increase surface movement. Sometimes it's just a case of moving the output
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of the filter up or down slightly to increase the agitation of the surface. Now, the second most
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likely cause of your fish gasping at the surface is increased levels of ammonia
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nitrite or nitrates in the water When our fish go to the bathroom their waste is high in ammonia In our filters we have bacteria that break that ammonia down first of all into nitrite
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and then secondly, into nitrate. So ammonia, even in small concentrations, is toxic to our fish
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Nitrite is also toxic to our fish, although slightly less so than ammonia
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and nitrate is toxic in high concentrations, but if we keep those concentrations low
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through water changes shouldn't cause our fish a problem. Now obviously we can't tell the levels of
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ammonia, nitrite or nitrate in our water just by looking at it we need to test using a test kit
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I typically use two different test kits, one is the API master test kit which I find to be very
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accurate although it's a little slow to use and the second thing I use is the Escher test strips
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Now I find test strips aren't quite as accurate as the API master test kit but they're very quick
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I can nip round and do half a dozen tanks in a couple of minutes and get some quick readings
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If when we test our water we find the water is high in ammonia or nitrite or nitrate
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the best thing to do is to carry out a large partial water change, leave it a few days
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test again. If you're still high, your fish are still gasping, carry out another large partial
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water change. If after these water changes you still find you have high concentrations
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you need to try and find out why. Typically it'll be a filter related issue or maybe because you're
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overfeeding. One of the best ways we can help keep the levels of nitrates low in our tank is to add
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live plants Live plants absorb many nitrates as they grow which is why I keep them with every fish I have In the description below I added some links to the test kits I use so you can check them out for yourself Now if you checked your tank and you seem to have sufficient surface movement
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and you've tested the water and your levels of ammonia, nitrite and nitrate are all low
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the next most likely cause is some sort of a parasite. Now, it can be tricky to determine
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exactly which parasite is attacking your goldfish, which is why I always recommend using a general
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treatment that kills a wide variety of pests and diseases. If you're in the UK or Europe
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then Escher 2000, in my experience, is a fantastic treatment. It kills a wide variety of parasites
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And if you're in the States, Paraclense, which is made by Fritz, has a fantastic reputation for
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killing a wide variety of pests and diseases. Typically, with both of these medications
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a short treatment over a few days will solve the problem and you'll officially be back to
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the normal selves. Now, if you found this video helpful, we'd really appreciate you hitting that
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like button to help spread the word to more people and supporting the channel. If like me you love to
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geek out on goldfish then why not join us on Instagram where we post regular pictures and
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short videos about our goldfish collection. If your goldfish has been struggling with a pest or
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disease they typically will be under the weather for a few days they may not have been eating
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One of the best things you can do is give them a live or a frozen food like bloodworm and if you want to know more about feeding your goldfish bloodworm check out this video over here
