Tragic Death of a Goldfish

[Flying Herring]

I was curious if anyone can tell me what happend to my goldfish which died a few weeks ago. I came home from work one night to find the fish had turned from brown to mostly red. it looked as though it was bleeding, and the mojority of the redness was concentrated around the mouth gills and joints (is that what they are called?) of the pectoral fins. there was no blood noticiable in the water. the fish spent the next few days listing at the top of the tank. then it sank and lay on the bottom gasping for a day before it finnally kicked. the only thing that had changed was i add a couple of plants to the tank a few days before the incident. also when fishing out the corpse i noticed there were sevral small (2-3mm) green bugs swimming away from my hand. i figure i got some infected/infested plants, but, having no previous experience with keeping fish, i do not know what actually happend. it would be great if someone can tell my what happened and how to avoid it in the future.

thanks.

[mjprather]

Maybe he was eaten by bugs?

Keeping goldfish in a 10 gallon tank is tough. They are very messy. Even with good filtration you would need to do two 50% water changes per week to keep him healthy. Maybe less if it was a baby goldfish.

I would suspect that there may have been something in/on the plants that killed him. Maybe someone else can identify the green bugs for you.

[GDominy]

I doubt it was the little bugs.... It sounds like your goldfish died from a bacterial infection like septicemia and was most likely coincedental to the plant additions.