I moved to rental house a year ago and my horse is on the same property with me. The corral where he is kept has a horse trough that had goldfish in it. (I have never used goldfish before.) A month ago I found the biggest goldfish dead; didn’t think anything about it, just thought it was old. Today I found the other 3 dead (smaller). I am wondering what happened. I emptied half of the water trough and added fresh water (the trough has an automatic watering system). I am wondering if the fish died because lack of oxygen or something. I’m just wondering if could effect my horse, if there was something in the water.
Where are you and what’s the weather been like? Does the tank have direct sun? Goldfish are a cold-water fish, and can get stressed and die in hot water.
Any algae in the tank? Another person I heard about had blue algae in her tank that was in a vacant field. All she lost were the fish in the tank.
Blue algae is poison for horses and fish, tank should be emptied, bleached to kill algae on all inside surfaces, rinsed and refilled. I would hang some buckets in case horse didn’t like bleach smell or lingering taste. Some horses are picky, others would drink bleach-smell water just fine.
You can turn off the water source to empty, use a siphon hose to get the bottom water out instead of trying to lift and dump the tank to clean it.
I would be more likely to blame the hot tank water mentioned above, for killing fish, than sudden blue algae contamination. Perhaps you can run more cold water into the tank to keep the fish cooled better during these summer days. Letting water splash down will aid in putting more air into the water, helpful to fish. Maybe floating some boards for fish shade might help, but sun on tank sides is going to heat the water anyway.
I live in Central California. We did have triple digits last week, but has been down in the nineties the last 3 or four days. In fact today was the coolest. Yes the tank gets sunlight all day until about 5:30. If the fish was stressed by the heat why did it take that long to die. They have been in that tank for at least a year or more.
The fish need to be able to get out of the sun. I’ve heard of peopke adding something like a cinder block to the bottom before for the fish.
Goldfish are incredibly resilient until suddenly they aren’t. They probably died from the heat. Goldfish are cold water fish and can’t tolerate those temps for very long. Heck I can’t think of many tropical fish that could. A tank in full sun, with that weather is not an appropriate home for fishies even with something like a cinderblock for them to take refuge in. If your that worried, dump, clean and refill just to be sure but you are probably fine.
Could it have been chlorine from tap water? Goldfish can also did from lack of oxygen in the water, especially in the heat.
Dissolved oxygen levels. The solubility of oxygen decreases as water temperature increases. The largest fish needed more O2 than the smaller fish. When the tanks O2 was depleted, the small fish died too.
If you added city water to that, that’s why it killed them. In CA all of the water has additives that will kill fish. It has to be well water.
I thought this was going to be one of those I-flushed-my-kid’s-dead-goldfish-do-I-tell-him? sort of threads. :lol:
I live in South Central Texas. All nine of my water troughs have goldfish in them. Recently, Mr. OH found three dead fish in the main tank for horses. We had a pretty strong algae growth in there and we think it could have been lack of oxygen. We run water to it twice a day. Mr. OH always lets it overflow, but I had not the day before, so maybe that’s what happened.
I drained it – found a fourth fish alive and well during the process and was able to move him/her to another water trough. Mr. OH brought the trough to the barn and power washed it and we refilled it. Fortunately, one of the troughs for the cows has had a goldfish population boom, so we were able to restock.
Some of the troughs have no tree cover at all, although the one with the problem does have cover from morning sun but not from afternoon. I generally have more problems with predator birds – years ago I watched a great blue heron have a Christmas breakfast on my goldfish. More recently I saw an owl snatch a large fish from a trough. Most of the tanks have big rocks set up for protection, but they might not provide adequate cover for the 6-inch-plus fish.
I do tend to do a weekly fish check – and bring some cattle cube crumbs with me to feed them. Discovered smaller population boom in trough for the paddock by the barn. Anyone need some fish?:lol:
Pieces or connectors of 4" or 6" PVC pipes make good fish hiding places in a water tank. We have Racoon here that like goldfish, so small pipe lengths work fine as cover for the fish in a deep tank. Pipe does not help if water is too warm or has no oxygen for the fish.
We had a decorative pond on the south side of the house. One summer we started losing fish. The reason was the water got too warm. They prefer cooler water temps and our water lilies that make shade for them were not growing yet for cover.
I have heard some say to put water in 2 litre pop bottles and freeze overnight. Place them in the pond.
