At Wit's End (Guppy Deaths)

[Ltygress]

I THINK I have a fungus problem. It started with a lone carrier guppy being placed with my orange crowntail male betta. Orange is my favorite color and I found him at Walmart and the fish hobby began again. He was healthy and fine for several weeks.

Then I went to the OTHER stupid place for fish (Petsmart) and bought two guppies. Quarantined for a month and then THEY were fine. Put them in with the betta in a 10G, and my orange male betta develops a white spot on his head within three days. It went from nothing the night before to something three times the size of his eye the next morning.

I immediately went to the LFS and got bacterial meds. But by the time I got home it had grown a bit fuzzy. Okay, fungus. I had lots of errands to run by then but picked up the fungus meds while I was out. I got home late that evening but it was too late. He was gone. I treated the tank anyway.

Since then I have gotten more guppies (from the LFS, not Petsmart) and EVERY SINGLE TIME I add them in with the first two, at least one dies. I got mollies and they acted ill the first day so they (like others) went into a hospital tank. The male just kept his fins pinned, hovered by the filter, and "waved" his body. I started treating with melafix and API fungus cure in the hospital tank.

The mollies began to perk back up so after treatment I put them back in the main tank. They have acted fine since then, with occasional flashing against the rocks though. But no other signs of illness.

The guppies just keep dying off - mostly the males. I actually lost the first male and kept getting replacements. But they are STILL dying off. So I switched from Melafix to Erythromycin. The tank itself was treated before, so I know it wasn't the tank. Or so I thought?

The problem is, the API fungus cure and Erythromycin doesn't seem to be working. Neither did Melafix. I've got a male guppy in the hospital tank right now. He's been in there three days. Today I did a water change, and added more API fungus cure like the label says. That was this morning.

This evening I noticed HIS ENTIRE LIPS ARE GONE! WHATEVER the disease is, even WITH erythromycin/melafix/API Fungus cure, it still ate up both of his lips. It's just an O-shaped hole there now. The only thing that moves as he breathes are his actual gills. No mouth movement.

I think PART of the reason he is living longer than the others is that he was FAT when I got him. The others were not. If this disease is affecting their mouths, the others would have wasted away quicker from lack of food.

What in the hell could cause this? If it really is mouth fungus, I guess I need to switch to another medication because this API crap isn't doing it. It does a really great job of dying everything green though!

Or do any of you know what else can cause this besides mouth fungus? Could it be a parasite of some sort? Clearly it's not bacterial if two separate bacterial meds didn't kill it off. I'm going to a different LFS tomorrow to see if I can get my hands on some Methylene Blue. But if anyone has any idea what ELSE this could be, please let me know!

 

[Far_King]

I found this a while back when I was having problems.
 
To be fair, I just use the Paraguard now which seems to hammer everything.
 
http/www.liveaquaria.com/PIC/article.cfm?aid=202

 

[Ltygress]

Funny. The company that runs that... Doesn't carry Paraguard! Neither does Petsmart, Petsense, or two local pet shops!

I had to order it from Amazon, expedited. But it was too late for that male in the hospital tank. He was gone when I woke up this morning.

 

[Bubble.Guppy]

Funny. The company that runs that... Doesn't carry Paraguard! Neither does Petsmart, Petsense, or two local pet shops!

I had to order it from Amazon, expedited. But it was too late for that male in the hospital tank. He was gone when I woke up this morning.

 
Sorry to hear about your guppy deaths... 
 
Do you ever give your guppys salt dips or add aquarium salt to your tank?

 

[NickAu]

Sorry to hear that.
 
I absolutely adore Guppies but can't seem to keep them alive or healthy so after I killed about 8 of them I just gave up.
 
To me a nice male guppy is every bit as nice as a betta.................. without the attitude.

 

[Ltygress]

I think I'm going to give up after this. The mollies I put in there were sick, but were treated successfully. So I'll just let them populate the tank and create live food/target fish babies.

 

[Bubble.Guppy]

I'd hate to see you give up on the guppys!

 

[Ltygress]

Well, guppies were never honestly part of my hobby anyway. I got them for tank cycling, and live food (since they breed so easily). Unfortunately, they haven't even really successfully cycled a tank because they die so quickly. I already gave up on that and bought some bacterial supplement.

 

[Bubble.Guppy]

What brand or type of bacterial supplement did you buy?

 

[Ltygress]

Seachem Stability

 

[Bubble.Guppy]

Ahh nice. Seachem is my favorite!

 

[Wildbetta]

This sounds like columnaris with it killing so quickly, presenting with whitish spots that get fuzzy, and with the eroding of the mouth.  It is normally a pretty aggressive gram negative bacteria that doesn't respond to many broad spectrum antibiotics or antibiotics that only treat gram positive bacteria which I am pretty sure the medications you tried are.  Treating with something like Kanamyacin, Kanaplex, Maracyn II, or Furan II usually is the best way to go. 

 

[Ltygress]

Now THAT diagnosis sounds promising!
I just set up a new hospital tank last night. Thrift store 10-gallon aquarium with no substrate, a power filter with only bio media, and one of the 200-watt heaters that I WAS going to use in my 100-gallon tank that I'm about to set up (I had three, but this one isn't going back to the 100G now).

I know 200 watts in a heater is a lot for a 10-gallon, but it's one thing I forgot to pick up while I was out yesterday, so I used what I had at the moment.

First two meds are erythromycin and Kordon's Rapid Cure. Once those treatments are done, I'm adding copper safe. I do have oxytetracycline on hand for my birds, but it's a powder form. I'll have to look up the dosing instructions, and whether or not I can use this one safely in the aquarium.

I'll keep you posted!

 

[Ltygress]

Okay, researched oxytetracyline and then did some SERIOUS math. All of the sources give you dosages for different brands of powder. Some of them are 100% oxytetracycline. Others are 50% or even 1%.

The one I have is from Tractor Supply, and it's sold for livestock (cows, pigs, goats, etc.). It's about 8%. And many dosages tell you to give it in MICROGRAMS or MILLIGRAMS, depending on the application. So I had to really break down some math to figure out the dosage for aquariums.

And then I found a warning. Oxytetracycline is an old sulfur-based antibiotic. When you first use it, it is yellow. But as it decays, it turns brown. Decaying (brown) tetracycline is actually harmful to fish, humans, and livestock! So you can REALLY only use it as a bath. And the dosage of this particular powder for a bath is like 1/8th of a teaspoon for two quarts of water. VERY little dosage here. But very economical since the bag I got from tractor supply costs only $6 and at 1/8th of a teaspoon per two quarts, that baby is going to last FOREVER. Yes, it's even cheaper than aquarium salt.

And the best good news is, it treats gram-negative bacteria very well. Most sources suggest one bath per day until symptoms disappear but NO MORE than 10 days. Tomorrow morning I'll give another dose of Erythromycin and Rapid Cure. Sunday morning I'll add Copper Sulfate and see what happens in the 24 hours after that. So Monday morning if they aren't looking and acting much better, I'll do the oxytetracycline baths once per day for each fish in the hospital tank until I feel they are ready for the main tank again. When they are ready, I'll probably do a "rinse" bath with clean dechlorinated water before actually putting them back in the main tank.
 
I could not find any information on how oxytetracycline affects shrimp or plants. So that may be a trial and error thing there (hopefully more trial than error). Neither of those are in my hospital tank, but I'm always worried about medicated fish bringing chemicals into main tanks afterwards.

 

[Bubble.Guppy]