I have 12 mixed fancy guppies, 1 Siamese fighter fish, one gold ringed butterfly sucker, one silver molly and a queen loach.

I have recently discovered that the queen loach has been eating the fins of my other fish. I was hoping to supply him with snails as a distracting food and add salt to the water to keep infection at bay from the fishes tails.

But now one guppy looks like it has white stuff on its body like cotton wool, and the molly is spending most of her time tail down at the bottom of the tank.

will my fish die??

im keeping the lights off to lower stress (but this makes the loach more active!!), increasing the heat, oxygen levels and dosing the tank with salt. I don't have any money to buy any fancy medications and i worry about these as they lower the oxygen levels in the tank and can impair the water quality.

I have only just got through ick (white spot), this is my first tropical tank and i am now wanting to give up!!

please help.

it's most likley that the siamese fighter is nipping the guppies, they're a v bad combination and you hsould re-home the siamese fighter or get him a little 5 gal tank of his own.

what are your stats for ammonia, nitrite and nitrate?

the cotton woll type growth is fungus and should be treated, plenty of meds available from your lfs.

the fighting fish has also been chewed and the loach killed another loach i got to live with it - i have not seen any aggression from the fighter and he was living with guppies before i homed him.

the water quality is perfect. i check it daily and i work in an aquatic store.

but i just want to know will the salt treatment and increased heat levels work?

no, salt is not a treatment.

it's what i call 'old wisdom', if you go back about 15 years in fishkeeping we had significantly less knowledge and understanding of the fishes natural environment. as such people did lots of things that are now not recommended, one of these things was to do as few water changes as possible to keep you 'old balanced water' which people thought was good for the fish. one of the side effects of 'old water' is that you get a high nitrate reading, adding salt to the tank reduces the effects of high nitrates on the fish, as such it helps fight off illnesses.

however fishkeeping has moved on a long way since those days, get yourself an anti fungal treatment and re-home the aggressive fish.