Guppies with Red gills!

[Shrewdy]

Hi, I have a problem with my Guppies. Their Gills seem to have gone a bit red overnight. All of them. I have noticed this a few days ago but the problem went away after about 24hrs. I also noticed that one of my male Guppies had a really black tail fin, where normaly it is a speckled green colour. My set up is as follows. 2ft x 1ft tank. Fluval 2 filter, Temp is 25c, I have 1 live plant and 1 plastic plant, 3 mollies, 6 Guppies and a small red crab. PH is just slightly alkaline at 7.3, ammonia is NIL, Nitrate and nitrite are both a bit high though. I have done some small water changes and it made no difference to the levels, I have had the tank set up for a month now, I use a quality water conditioner and also I used some Cycle bacteria booster stuff, I have just added some'King British' Safe Water which biologically neutralises organic waste and degrades Ammonia and Nitrite. Still no change!! Is my tank just going through a natural process or have I got a bigger problem, I haven't lost any fish yet but feel it will be a matter of time unless I take some drastic action. I even changed 50% of the water and still no change!! Please someone tell me this is normal at the moment!


Nitrate = 20.0 mg/L
Nitrite = 0.8 mg/L
PH = 7.3 from tank
PH = 7.5 from Tap
Ammonia = 0.0 mg/L

All the fish seem happy enough, feeding well although I don't give them too much. Guppies have got red gills and one of them has a very black tail which wasn't apparent before.

 

[Swimfins]

Do a water change, about 50%, and add 1 tablespoon of salt per 5 gallons. Your nitrItes are too high.

 

[kveeti]

Swimfins is correct. The salt will help detoxify the effects of nitrites. But you must do water changes to get your nitrites down below 0.25ppm. Quality water conditioner is good. Ditch the Cycle bacteria product for sure, it does not work; I'd also ditch the King British Safe Water product although I've never heard of that one before.

 

[daveedka]

One of the big problems with "cycle" is that it does in fact eat ammonia for a few days, but does little or nothing for nitrite. The result is that your true bio-filter suffers from competition for ammonia, and never properly estabilishes. Generally most folks who use it end up with similar problems. Another thing I have seen far too many times is that overfeeding will often bring up nitrites with little or no visible ammonia spike. it seems that the ammonia eaters handle things better when production levels are elevated, so the problem shows up in nitrites. I would forego feeding for a couple of days as well as doing water changes, and let things settle down. Your fish won't even notice two days without food, and it should decrease variables for you.

Salt will combat the nitrite as mentioned, so will KCL (pottassium chloride or nu-salt) I would imagine CaCl would also do the job. The chloride is the agent that combats the effects of ntrite, so any of these products should help your fish in the same way. I seldom add salt for any reason except Specified treatment of parasites, So I thought I'd mention the options available. Salt is not a bad thing at all when dealing with nitrites, but the chloride is the key.
Dave