Bernard Crawford
New member
In my 30 gallon tank I have one gorgeous Gold Severum (It is now alone since the other fish died of old age and such). It is over 6 inches long and probably about 6 years old (I'm not absolutely sure, I have had him around over 5 years and bought him when he was young). Tonight I came home and found my fish not breathing or moving at all, completely motionless floating freely around the tank. At first I thought it was dead but after a couple minutes it moved it's eye and saw me then moved around a bit. I then realized that the temperature was 54 degrees and I almost shit myself. I saw that the heater was mysteriously unplugged and I do not keep my heat on during the day. Out of desperation we quickly started replacing the water with very warm water to try to save the fish since it was going in and out of consciousness. We quickly rose the heat up to 72 degrees then let the heater do the rest. I just looked over at the tank and he is swimming, doing 1000000000 times better than he was, but I am concerned that being exposed to such temperatures for an amount of time or having such extreme temperature heating may have caused permanent damage. I feel right now that it is an absolute miracle that he/she (idk) didn't die, it was in such a bad condition. I do realize that it went into shock and is going through more stress than its ever gone through and I have treated the water with stuff to help with that. Is it going to be permanently injured?