Weird behaviour of female RREA

[Fishrookie12]

Tank size: 90L
pH: 7.6
ammonia: 0
nitrite: 0
nitrate: <10ppm
kH: N/A
gH: N/A
tank temp: 25-26 degrees celsius

Fish Symptoms (include full description including lesion, color, location, fish behavior):
The female is always at the bottom with clumped fins, rarely comes to the top and swims on the spot. I had two RREA females, but lost one last week, now this female is acting the same way as the passed female. She isnt breathing heavily but her gills seems to be open and slightly red. The male is perfectly fine though.

Volume and Frequency of water changes:
30% water change very weak

Chemical Additives or Media in your tank:
None

Tank inhabitants:
Ponds snails, Bloody Mary Cherry shrimp and a pair of RREA guppy.

Recent additions to your tank (living or decoration):
These RREA guppies are the most recent addition i made to the tank.

Exposure to chemicals:
I fed the female some medicated beef heart (one with metronidazole and one with praziquantel) and peas. Have exposed her with a low dosage salt (rock salt) treatment and Blue Planet Multi-cure for three days and put her back, shes displaying the same symptom.

Digital photo (include if possible):

 

[Colin_T]

What is RREA?

The fish in the picture has clamped fins and appears to have flared gills. Clamped fins can be from poor water quality, soft water (low GH), protozoan or bacterial infections.

It doesn't look like a bacterial infection.

Does the fish rub on objects?
If no then it probably isn't protozoan.

Livebearers like guppies need a general hardness (GH) above 200ppm and if the water is too soft they develop issues. Shrimp and snails should be fine with harder water so you might want to get the GH checked at the local petshop. Take in a sample of tank water and tap water and get them both tested. Write the results down in numbers, when they do the test.

If the GH is less than 200ppm then get some Rift Lake water conditioner to increase the hardness. You can get Livebearer water conditioners too but they contain salt (sodium chloride) and that isn't always good for some shrimp.

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You can add rock salt (often sold as aquarium salt), sea salt or swimming pool salt to the aquarium at the dose rate of 1 heaped tablespoon per 20 litres of water. If there is no improvement after 48 hours you can double that dose rate so there is 2 heaped tablespoons of salt per 20 litres.

If you only have guppies or livebearers in the tank you can double that dose rate, so you would add 2 heaped tablespoons per 20 litres and increase it after 48 hours if there is no improvement so there is a total of 4 heaped tablespoons of salt per 20 litres.

Keep the salt level like this for at least 2 weeks but no longer than 4 weeks otherwise kidney damage can occur. Kidney damage is more likely to occur in fish from soft water (tetras, Corydoras, angelfish, gouramis) that are exposed to high levels of salt for an extended period of time, and is not an issue with livebearers.

The salt will not affect the beneficial filter bacteria but the higher dose rate will affect some plants. The lower dose rate will not affect plants.

After you use salt and the fish have recovered, you do a 10% water change each day for a week. Then do a 20% water change each day for a week. Then you can do bigger water changes after that.

 

[Fishrookie12]

Hi Colin, thanks for replying!
I have seen the male rubbing against bolbitis leaves but he doesn't have any clamped fins and seem just fine. Would the salt treatment affect the shrimp or is it best to remove the two fish?

 

[Colin_T]

Shrimp are normally fine with salt because they evolved from ocean shrimp, but some species are apparently sensitive. However, I have never had any issues using salt with the shrimp I keep. But I haven't kept cherry shrimp so can't be 100% on them.

If the male guppy has rubbed a few times you might have a low level protozoan infection in the tank. Using salt at 4 heaped tablespoons per 20 litres might help, otherwise raise the temperature to 30C for 2 weeks. The high temperature will kill protozoans without any chemicals.

Clean the inside of the glass, do a 75% water change and gravel clean the substrate before raising the temperature. Clean the filter if it hasn't been done in the last 2 weeks.

You should only increase the temp by 2-3C each day until you get to 30C and then hold it there for 2 weeks. After that you slowly lower the temp by 2-3C until you are back down to 25C.

Increase aeration/ surface turbulence when raising the temp or using chemicals because they reduce the oxygen in the water.

 

[Fishrookie12]

The salt is definitely helping, they are looking much better! Thanks again Colin