MyDaughtersTank

Hey all- A day after giving birth, one of my guppies has a red sore on her back and white spots(?) on one side of her body. The spots are only on the one side of her body, not on her fins or mouth, and I honestly can't even tell if they are cysts or just raised scales. She is also relatively lethargic, somewhat labored breathing, and not super interested in food. I included pictures of her top, her "good" side, and 2 pics of her side with spots. Tank specs if you need them: 20g high stocked with 5 guppies (2m/3f), 5 zebra danio, 1 Platy. 0 Ammonia/Nitrite, 20-40 Nitrate, 78F, stable 7.4 ph, 8 dGH. I also did a water change yesterday for what it's worth. What are we looking at here? I have a quarantine tank and meds trio ready to go, but I'm hoping to better diagnose before I start throwing meds at her (or in case I will need to treat the entire tank). This will be the third time I have to nurse her back to health since I got her last August 😞 Thanks as always!

Water parameters: pH - 7.4 Temp - 78F Ammonia/Nitrites/Nitrates - 0/0/~10-20 dKH - 3-4 dGH - 8-16 (depending on water changes and when i last added a wonder shell) So a week and a half ago I found one of my guppies laboring near the top of the tank with a large, lumpy, swollen abdomen and a mild prolapse. She had been perfectly fine that morning. I gave it overnight in the naïve hope that she was about to have fry, but the next day her scales were clearly pineconeing so I put her in the hospital tank with the meds trio and little hope for survival. Surprisingly, over the next couple of days the swelling went way down to more or less normal and her behavior and appetite also returned to normal. But she also developed a black area on her abdomen with some scale loss. She spent a week with the meds trio and minimal feeding- I did a 30% water change on day 7 and began feeding once daily. She is still eating/swimming/pooping normally but this black spot is still a concern and now her abdomen has taken on a bit of a pointy shape. I included 2 pics here- the one in the breeder box is from a week ago when she was already looking better (the spot was much darker in reality than the picture shows). The other pic with the pointy belly is from today. Any ideas on what this is and what my plan should be from here? Is it disease? Injury? Infection? Parasites? Internal failures? Should I remedicate? Just observe? Feed less? Salt? Any and all help appreciated- thank you.

What are the pH and KH in your tank? I'm guessing the pH is not super high, based on your ammonia chart comment, but you should also note that if it drops too far below 7.0, the bacterial colony may have a harder time getting established. I recently went through a fish-in cycle (albeit in a smaller tank with waaay fewer fish). I took pretty much the exact same approach as you are taking for the ammonia spike- water changes to keep it under 1.0 ppm and dose with prime to be safe. I got through it with no problems at all, just needed to be patient. The nitrite spike is a completely different story though- as it is highly toxic even at low levels. I luckily didn't lose any fish, but my livebearers spent an entire week barely moving at the top of the tank, even while I was doing everything I could to keep nitrites under 0.5 ppm. I worry that with all those fish, you're going to have to do multiple water changes daily to keep things under control....

Your test results are all over the map to the point that I wonder if maybe your testing method is faulty? Have you tried confirming results with another test kit?

Just a quick update for anyone searching for solutions for this in the future: So a peaceful night in the breeder box accomplished nothing, as they were right back at each other a minute after being released. I let them go for a few minutes to see if they would figure it out on their own, and just as I was ready to give up and went to get the net, they stopped. I guess they just needed to establish a hierarchy. Since then, the bigger one will occasionally lunge at the smaller one, but she immediately retreats a little and its over- no more fighting or any problems that I can see.

Easiest answers: -fewer fish -more/bigger water changes

Hm. So here's what I would do if I were you (full disclosure- I am still a beginner as well, so feel free to take my advice with a huge grain of salt): Dose your ammonia back up to 2-3 ppm. Test the water after one hour to ensure you are dosing and testing correctly- your test kit should show you 2-3 ppm ammonia. Test again in 24 hours. The standard protocol is to look for exactly 0 ppm ammonia and nitrites, but in my opinion as long as you are under, say, .5 of both after only one day, that shows that you have a bacterial colony (+ plants) that can handle a reasonable bioload. Now do a 50% water change or whatever you need to do to get ammonia and nitrites all the way down to zero, making sure you vacuum up any dead plant matter or other detritis. Go ahead and add one or two small, hardy fish (no plecos) and feed very lightly once every 2-3 days. Try to continue to test for ammonia/nitrites as often as is reasonable for you and do weekly water changes with thorough gravel vacs. After 2 weeks with no ammonia/nitrites, you can up to feeding once every 1-2 days, then keep increasing until you reach your permanent feed schedule, then add a couple more fish, etc etc. You can riff on this to some degree, but in summary the idea is 1) establish a reasonable baseline bacterial colony that can convert ammonia into nitrates; then 2) increase "bioload" very slowly in order to allow your bacteria to catch up if need be. Make sense? Oh and to answer your original question: no, I'm not convinced your gh and kh are the issue 🙂 I could be wrong though. Good luck!

Thanks Ken! And yeah- the male harassment was definitely normal breeding behavior, just much more aggressive than I had ever seen him with his quarantine girlfriend. The girl-on-girl fighting on the other hand...

I read through your other thread as well. You implied you are cycling by dosing pure ammonia and not doing water changes. Your overall nitrogen numbers seem unreasonably low after 2.5 months. How often are you adding ammonia and how much- i.e. what ppm are you aiming for?

Hi all! Short version (tl;dr): Newly added female guppy immediately started harassing established female guppy, which quickly devolved into an ongoing fight with no one backing down. What is the best course of action? Full story: Our display tank is a 20g high, stocked with 1 female guppy (we'll call her the "old female"), 1 female platy, and 5 zebra danios. Everyone is very peaceful and gets along well. Tank has been running for three months, is fully cycled, and has lots of hiding spots and line of sight breaks (no live plants, but "lush" with fake plants). We've had another male and female pair of guppies in a quarantine tank for 4 weeks with no signs of illness and never any hostility towards each other. The female even dropped fry in the quarantine tank and the adults ignored them despite no hiding spots! So I finally moved the new guppies over to the display tank today, and after cleaning up for a few minutes, I came back to observe. The male guppy was exclusively and AGGRESSIVELY harassing the old female, who is close to twice the size of either of the two new guppies. The old female was mostly tolerating it, but trying to focus on her algae grazing. However, the new female was right there with them and she also started harassing the old female- lasered in on her and pecking at her sides. This continued for a little bit until the old female started fighting back, and then they went at each other for several minutes until I used my net to separate them. Unfortunately this was not a serious solution and the old female found the new female again and immediately went after her. At this point, I removed the new female and put her back into the QT. I also turned the lights off in the main tank for the rest of the day to reduce stress and skipped the evening feed. As far as I can tell everything has been fine since then. I tried to research female guppies fighting, but couldn't find much info out there- doesn't seem all that common. My best guess is that the male saw a large female for the first time and released a hormone explosion into the water, which made the ladies go bonkers?? My plan right now is to reintroduce the new female in a breeder box in the next day or two and let everyone get accustomed to each other's presence before the fully releasing her. Good plan? Is this normal behavior? Any other thoughts/suggestions? Thanks so much in advance to anyone who takes the time to respond. This is our/my first tank since I was a kid and I am super into it! I'll be happy to provide more info if needed.