Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Sounds like I will be blending some pellets and seeing how that goes.
I didn't realise the flakes were so terrible.

OBO, might explain why one of the fishes is missing the eyes.

When I used to have an aquarium I had a batch of black fan tails (not sure of the correct name), but they attacked and killed the larger gold fish.

It started by them sucking out the eyes, and I had been feeding them plenty.

I spoke to the supplier, and he said that it is not uncommon for this to happen with that species.

Never had any issues with the original goldies, and once I removed the new black fan tails, the killing stopped (they were even attacking each other from time to time, but mostly the others in the tank). One of the goldies that had one eye gone, went on fine and lived for many more years.

I would separate the new and old fish and see what happens. If the eyes are being sucked out, unlikely to be birds, IMO they would take the whole fish, and you might find some entrails on a post nearby.

Ask the pet shop if they have had any feedback from others who have purchased the same species recently...

Very interesting newfarmer, thanks for the info I will ask next time I am down there.
At least I have a few different things to try now.
When you had your problems with the fan tails were you feeding flakes or good quality pellets.
Interesting to know if the flakes I am feeding really might be part of the problem.

Feed my goldies on flakes, not had that problem. Goldfish guts are relatively short and imho higher protien food is just a waste.
If you want to do that just put some frozen peas in a bowl with water into the microwave, or pour boiling water over them, take the skins off and chuck it in. Anyway their metabolisms will have slowed with the cooling waters

Sounds like there is another problem would take both temp and ph readings at different times of the day.

Long time ago, but pretty sure it was flakes back then, we did use pellets for some time, but I think that was after that stage. It was just a typical aquarium, not an aquaponics setup...

That was the only time we had issues though, and we had heaps of different fish over the time, and later on we got the black fan tails for another system and had no issues. So it was like we got a bad bunch