Guppy fry with bent spine. Advice please.

iamgroovy

iamgroovy

Nature Lover
Jul 7, 2005
593
0
0
47
PA USA
I have a dozen or so guppy fry in a nursery box and they are almost big enough to release into the tank. My concern is, I noticed one if them has a bent spine. His/her back end kind of flips upward.
I've never purposely raised fry before and I've heard about culling and am wondering if I should cull this one before he/she can reproduce.
He/she seems healthy and happy, has a great appetite and seems to swim ok but...
Is there any reason to think this may be disease or is it common to have some fry with this kind of problem.
All the other inhabitants of the tank seem fine.
It's a 20g with four adult guppies, five punctatus cories, several brigs snails and some red ramshorns, and a colony of cherry shrimp (two months ago, I started with 6 and now they're everywhere so I must be doing something right!).
Amm 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate between 5 and 10

I do a 30% to 40% pwc every weekend or whatever I need to do to keep the nitrates under 10.

Thanks for your help!
 
it's a genetic thing, often brought out and aggravated by severe inbreeding.

If you don't want any future fry to have this broken back look, i suggest you remove and euthanize or give away this fish before it reaches sexual maturity.
 
Thanks, these are pure bred German Black Metalheads so it stands to reason they'd be inbred.

If I can't find a place for him, I'll euthanize:headshake2:
 
Yeah, this happens quite frequently in our lab populations. Definitely comes from inbreeding, and they need to be euthanized, as they can pass this onto fry. It's not Bad per se, its like having a hunch back as a human, everything will probably still function normally (some of ours lose swimming ability quickly, and seem to have pain there as well), but its not something you want to pass on, because they generally don't live very long. We euthanize ours immediately because the Animal Rights Protocols say that these fish are in pain.
 
I saw a huge pleco like this at a LFS. I thought he was sick. Guess not. He was at least a foot long. Pretty odd looking. I almost took a picture, but I can't get them out of my phone. :)
 
Well this can be sovled by one simple question.
Do you have oscars or mean cichlids?
 
Nope, the meanest fish I have is one of my bettas, Brutus.
But I don't think I could do it...although I hate to waste a fresh meal...
 
I had a batch of guppy fry and all of the banana guppies (spine curved upwards) ended up having trouble swimming and eventually dying. They seemed to have an air bladder issue that the normal guppies did not have. My bichir enjoyed eating them.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
AquariaCentral.com
Top Bottom