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I posted this in the hospital forum a week ago, but nobody answered there, so I thought I'd try it here:

I have a 500 gallon pond with six common goldfish in it. They're all about six inches long, and I've had them since last year -- they wintered over very nicely.

I started the pond up for the season a few weeks ago. All the fish are swimming around happily, eating eagerly (although I'm still going light on the food) and generally acting healthy and happy.

But one of the orange comets got a couple weird-looking black spots on his gill plates a couple of weeks ago, not long after I started the pump and filter. Now, he's getting black smudges on his sides; the darkest area seems to be toward the edges of his scales. It doesn't seem to affect his behavior or his appetite at all.

I don't think it's a simple, normal color change, but I can't figure out what's going on.

Apparently there's a disease that's nicknamed "black smudge" (same as "black spot," I think) that's caused by a parasite carried by snails, but I don't have snails in the pond.

I also read that black spots are often signs of ammonia burn, but that doesn't make sense in this case because 1) I haven't had any ammonia register on a test kit yet and 2) none of the other fish are affected.

Any idea what it might be? As I said, I don't think it's just that he's changing color -- he's already at least two years old, maybe three; plus, it doesn't look quite the same as black coloration on some of the other (normally spotted) fish.

FYI, no nitrites or nitrates registering yet in the pond. It's planted, although there's not much foliage yet. The pH is about 7.6.

All help appreciated!

I have often had koi and goldfish change colors on my. I had a nice black and orange shubunkin and after a couple years the black started to be replaced with white. If there is no behavior change then I wouldn't be very concerned.

I had one do that to me before, I had the fish for about a year then it started to get the black speckles on him/her it did not spread to the other fish and after a couple of months the speckles vanished, I still don't have a clue why this happened, I don't test water with kits so I can't tell you what the water perameters were. If you fish looks healthy and normal I wouldn't worry to much about it.

:%)Joe:%)

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