Everyone is dying

B

bozco

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Dec 4, 2003
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This is horribly frusterating.

My guppy tank, a 10 gal, seems to have contracted something that is killing off my fish one by one. There were 10 guppies and 5 glowlite tetras in the tank. The tetras were going to be moved out making the tank a guppy only setup and of course lessening the fish load. Infact they were going to be moved out a few days after the last four guppies were added, but one of my old fish died, so I decided to wait before moving the tetras into my big tank to avoid speading anything. A few days ago, just when I thought it'd be safe I lost another guppy and yesterday another one.

Today I have a very unhappy looking tetra and female guppy. The symptoms are simple, they stay at the surface and gasping for air, sometimes eating sometimes not. The guppy is the worst I've seen so for, she sits almost vertical in the water.

My quarentine tank is currently housing guppy fry and I don't have the finances at the moment to set up a new one.

I have started treating with melafix, but I have my doubts it will do any good. And I have increased the airation in the tank as the sick fish seem to want more oxygen but I'm not sure if that will do any good either.

I'm comptletely lost here. I can't afford to loose all the fish in that tank. I have three pregnant females in there. I don't want to move them to the fry tank, afaid they'll carry the disease over. I know it sounds awful, but would it do anything at all if I just removed and disposed of the two sick fish. Would this give me any chance at all of breaking the pattern?

The tank is not a new setup, its been running smoothly since September 2002, with only about 4 deaths in that time.

Please help
 
Readings

Ammonia 0 and Nitrites 0
The tetra was dead when I got up there to do the tests
I changed the water on saturday, and after finding the body yestery did another change. 25% the first time and 50% yesterday.
 
Did you just recently add new guppies to the tank? I'm unclear as to where those 4 guppies you mentioned in your original post came from. How long ago were the most recent fish added to the tank?

Does the remaining sick guppy look really fat? Not pregnant fat, but is it bloated at all?
 
No, not bloated, just heavy with eggs, and even then not very, she's not in condition.

I've dug up my records,

The last guppies were added on the 10th of January.

The first death occured on the 11th, but this was a very old fish and had been showing it before the new fish arrived, I don't beleive he his related to this problem. He was not displaying the symptoms of the dying fish now.

The second death was on the 24th, one of the new fish

The third death was yesterday, on the 28th, an origional guppy

The tetra, as I said, just died, today, the 29th

The female is still going, but just barely, she is also a new fish

There is no pattern in which fish are dying. It seems to be affecting both old and new. I was very careful when I picked them out. I don't buy fish from tanks that contain sick looking or dead fish, and I check out the tanks they share filters with as well, just to be sure. I have no idea whats going wrong here.
 
1. Disease?
2. Water Temp?
3. Water purity (ph, ammonia, other)?
4. underfeeding?
5. overcrowding?


I recommend for your 10g tank.

1. 50% water change
2. change chemical medium (new charcoal etc)
3. add aquarium salt (as recommended on package)
4. add aquari-sol (as recommended for prevention)
5. add stress coat (both for water and fish health)

wait 1 week to re-evaluate

This is the most common thing done for just about any fish problem (disease, pollution, water quality etc).
 
Increasing water changes and adding carbon (to adsorb toxins, if present) are pretty good ideas. I don't think I'd start adding stuff to the water willy nilly without some good idea of what I was trying to treat, though.

Stepping up water changes is almost always my first response to any sign of illness or distress.

Jim
 
Disease and overcrowding are the only things I can think of, and the load was only meant to be temporary, like I said.

The water temp is fine, the results from the tests above are fine and they are fed once a day, everyday. I used to feed them more but was told I ws overfeeding so I cut it back.

The 50% water change was done yesterday.

I removed the carbon today, do I put it back in now? People are telling me to take it out while others are saying to put some in. It should not need replacing as it is only 20 days old.

I fogot to mention I am running a new filter. I was using a UGF system but was not pleased and pulled it up, replacing it with the AC mini(on Jan. 9th). Until last week I had the media from the old ugf in with the sponge and carbon on the AC. I also replaced 3/4 ths of the old gravel with new gravel, because of a terrible algae problem that has since cleared up.

Could it be some kind of internal parasite? The fish that have died, save for the tetra, did so during the night and I found them in the morning ripped open by the other fish. If one was carrying a parasite and other others ate it could they have contracted it too?
 
From that history, it's really hard to tell what's going on. One thing though is that when you removed the UG filter and the gravel, you disturbed the biological filteration of the tank, which can cause all sorts of trouble. Your tank may have even went through another cycle, did you get raised ammonia or nitrite levels after you changed filters? Something like this could certainly be a factor in your troubles, but there's a lot of variables.


Another thing is, commercially bred guppies are notorious for parasites, disease ect. I think many commercial guppy breeds nowadays are just weak sickly fish in general. I've heard many experienced fishkeepers have lots of trouble with guppies, which are, when properly bred and raised, tough as nails.

My only experience with them in the last 15 years is 6 "sunset guppies" I had a few years ago where 3 died of parasites in my QT tank 3 days after I bought them (these 1 - 3 inch long, very thin tapeworms must have left their bodies when they died - I found them on the bottom wiggling around) I took the remaining 3 back to the store, and I'd say 50% of the guppies in the tank they were from were gone - huge losses. This is really common at stores in my area.

So, that said, if your guppies were mass raised and from a pet store, it's likely they were in poor health. Given that history, that's not a great explanation to your problem, (yours could have been perfectly healthy) but it's something to think about.
 
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