my poor ryukin (pato)

[GoldfishLover]

I know he suffered from ammonia burn. That's why I not have him in a 10 gallon by himself with a filter (for a 20 gallon) and an airstone block. I have some anacharis with him as well. I don't understand this. Just last night he had a few black markings that he never had before. Other people have told me that he's healing from ammonia burn and how you can tell is from the black marks. But just from last night and now this morning.. there's more. Like he's changing from red to black but they told me that fish don't normally change to black. I'm also doing water changes. My question is.. is he going to stop getting the black marks and will he heal from all this? BTW.. he's also very active. Acting like nothing's going on. Just normal except the black marks. Please help me.

Thank you

[t_chelle16]

What are your actual readings for ammonia, nitrIte, and nitrAte?

-Chelle

[GoldfishLover]

I actually don't have the best testing kits. I got them from W.M. where it shows colors of how everything is. It shows everything is "ideal" which is the lowest it could be. So if you wanted numbers... I can't give you that. Cause the testing strips just shows colors saying "ideal, safe, stress, harmful, and danger" One is just for ammonia and one is for nitrates, nitrites, hardness and alkalinity and ph level. All shows that everything is ideal. I plan on getting better testing kits but I can't get it right now cause soon going to be moving into my new house and not moving my fish right now anyways. I just wanna make sure Pato is going to make a full recovery. I already had to take him out of the main tank cause the others ganged up on him. and so I put him in a 10 gallon by himself. He was going real slow and swimming in circles so after about 2 days added the Oranda with him and he perked right up. Within 24 hours of adding the Oranda he did a 180 in behavior. After I found out he had those black markings from ammonia burn then I took the oranda out but I noticed and watched and the oranda never got the ammonia burn. Weird. Please just tell me that my Pato is going to make a full recovery in a couple of weeks.

[t_chelle16]

Really, it all depends on how well you're able to keep the ammonia at 0 and without a decent test kit, that's going to be hard to determine. Until you can get a good tester (I recomend the Aquarium Pharmaceuticals tests), I'd do daily 25% water changes.

-Chelle

[GoldfishLover]

Well I got the best advice I'm going to get from a petstore owner that's about two hours from me. She came over here and looked at it and said everythings fine that since he's so small that could be like scabs are on us from when he was ganged up on or he's changing to black a little bit. She brought her test kit over here and tested all my tanks and looked at my fish and said these are some of the best looking fish she's seen in a long time. All my water params are great and I have nothing to worry about and she suggested I put my oranda back in there with him even though it's only a 10 gallon. So I'm going to take her advice cause she's been in the business for atleast 10 years. Has about 3 tanks set up (hers) at her store and has about 5 at home spread around the house. A mixture of saltwater, tropical, and goldfish tanks. So I think I'm going to take her advice from now on. But thank you for actually replying.