Fancy guppy troubles

T

turtlefish

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May 9, 2005
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I have 6 fancy guppies (4 female, 2 male) in a 10 gallon tank. THe tank is filered by a penguin 150B for good water (its rated for 30 gallon tanks) quality, and high oxygenation. Well, the filters been running for about 2 weeks, with established bio media and a ever increasing performance bio-wheel. My ammonia i just tested yesterday at 0. Today, one female (heavily pregnant) has been staying at the top of the tank and sucking air constantly. One male will also do this, but not as much. The behavior is erratic, sucking air then diving to the bottom, then coming up again. Im going to do a water change soon.
Only thing i noticed was the guppy in question had a little bit reddened spots behind the gills, the area where they have two small fins, right behind the gills. Could it be some kind of parasite tahts making breathing difficult?
 
I have had that problem. Ammonia is probably the culprit in my case. What kind of tests do you use? It could also be low pH. Guppies like pH above 7.0. I'm adding driftwood to my tank to raise the pH naturally. I currently have a pH of around 6.8-7.0 and an ammonia level of around .5mg/L (decreasing steadily with frequent changes). My guppies are still a little red around the gills, and I don't know which is the culprit.
 
Well i did an ammonia test yesterday with the AP saciclyte (sp) kit. It registered at 0, as expected since iv got a bio-wheel and biorings in the filter. I did a water change and it seemed to help. Thing is, it was mainly one fish, not all. This is really confusing.
 
If its a young tank you should probably still be doing water changes daily even with the bio wheel. I have the bio wheel and use Bio Spira which is supposed to stop ammonia spikes completely with new tanks, but I still have spikes so I'm still doing a 15-20% water change daily for the first couple weeks.

Another thing to do is test your water straight from the tap. See if you have any ammonia in it from the start. You might not be getting all of it with treatment before use, but then by the time you test it the Bio Wheel has gotten rid of enough of it to keep it from showing up on the tests. I know that my water has 0 ammonia, so water changes will help. Maybe yours don't.

Keep doing changes every day (or as often as possible) for a couple weeks and see if that makes a difference. You aren't going to hurt them unless your tap water is nasty for some reason. My guppies are getting steadily better and they used to be doing the same thing yours are (swimming at the top, red gills).
 
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