Help!! Does my guppy have dropsy?

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mel_20_20

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Sep 1, 2008
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Deep in the heart of texas
I'm worried that I may be seeing early signs of dropsy.
I noticed that the guppy has a sort of rough texture to him, as compared to the female who is more smooth.

Taking my glasses off, and looking more closely at him, I can see that the scale edges seem to be pronounced. Not standing from the body yet, as I observed in a guppy that died several months ago from dropsy, but, nevertheless, I do see scale edges very very slightly raised.

I had a disaster a couple of weeks ago, adding back water after a WC, that accidentally didn't have conditioner in it.

Three neons died, and the guppies showed signs of stress, but after the conditioner was added, and after a couple of hours, they were fine and hungry.

I knew that the stress of that event may come back to bite me with health issues for the other occupants, and I hope this is not what is happening.

What can I do, right now, that may help him? His behaviour seems OK, other than swimming up and down the side of the glass rather frantically, and in general fast movement.

The other guppy just goes with him most of the time, but does leave his side and more or less sort of assume a less frantic pace.

Am I in trouble here? What shoud I do, if anything, right now?

I forgot to mention that I have also observed at the base of his dorsal fin, not touching the body, a tiny round bump. It is almost perfectly round, about the size of a knot in a thread. Same color as his fin, not whitened or lighter in shade. I never noticed this before in this guppy, so I don't know if it is a new developement or not.
 

mel_20_20

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Sep 1, 2008
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The scales aren't standing out like a pine cone yet. I hope this is not dropsy. My params are good now, but he did go through a severe stress to his system. I saw somewhere on these posts that epsom salts may help... If true, I don't know how to do that.
 

KarlTh

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Feb 15, 2008
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Dropsy is when the fish is swollen due to organ failure. It may, and often does, result in the pine cone look when the symptom is severe, but that's caused simply by the bloating, not specifically the dropsy.
 

J double R

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Jan 13, 2007
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have you looked into intestinal blockages, and feeding peas to alleviate?
 

mel_20_20

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Sep 1, 2008
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Deep in the heart of texas
I do give them a couple of nuked english peas ever other day. He had some today. He has a small white speck on his side now, so I think he's developed ich as well.
 

marbilus

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Oct 31, 2008
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epsom salts if i recall correctly help the fluid that's built up under the skin of the fish escape... it doesn't do much other than help the fish be more comfortable but hey, that's never a bad thing!
 

KarlTh

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Epsom salts will relieve constipation. Even if they did release the fluid build up of dropsy it would not really help much because the failed organs are still failed.
 
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