Confused What To Do Now...

[DaveyG]

Hi all

I'm looking for a bit of help/advice.

I have a 200L tank (completed a fishless cycle about 6 months ago) and went for hardy fish (mainly live bearers). Until about a week ago the tank mates were:

6 guppies
5 platies
5 mollies
6 blue tetras
4 cherry barbs

I bought 6 female guppies about a week ago and thats when the trouble started. Since then I have lost 4 male guppies and 4 female guppies. All had the pretty much the same symptoms: ragged/damaged tail followed by staying at the top of the tank, followed by the tail becoming completely shredded without any interaction from other fish and then sadly death. It seemed to effect 1 at a time almost, so it was very quick from a guppy looking completely fine to this state.

I have some anti-bacterial meds in there at the moment and the last 4 guppies (2 male, 2 female) are absolutely fine and always have been. Also, the other fish seem to have never been affected by any of this. Water stats are fine - Ammonia = 0, Nitrite = 0, Nitrate = 10-20, PH = 8.

Now I have a seemingly fine bunch of fish but I would like/need to know if this was some kind of guppy-only disease and if so do I now have to do a 100% water change and bleach the tank before I put the baby fry I have into it? I'm not sure how I'd do this but want to make sure I don't put more guppies in there if they are not going to survive.

Please help, any advice would be great.

Thank you

 

[Wills]

Sounds to me like one of the other fish are nipping and the stress is killing the guppies - good call on the anti bacterial in the tank for now though. Cherry barbs are sometimes known as nippers and I have heard of some mollies being bullies as well. I wouldnt strip down the tank as this will only damage and stress your other fish. Apart from the tails any issues with health? Such as white spot? Bloating?
Wills

 

[DaveyG]

Sounds to me like one of the other fish are nipping and the stress is killing the guppies - good call on the anti bacterial in the tank for now though. Cherry barbs are sometimes known as nippers and I have heard of some mollies being bullies as well. I wouldnt strip down the tank as this will only damage and stress your other fish. Apart from the tails any issues with health? Such as white spot? Bloating?
Wills

None at all, I've been researching into as many fish diseases as I can and nothing matches, it was literally just the tails! Can the whole tail fall apart just from being nipped? Once a guppy had a sign that its tail was a bit ragged I'd isolate the fish and the tail would continue to fall apart! Or is it that the guppies get a little nipped and stressed and then they are more susceptible to infection? Could the remaining 2 male guppies (the first fish I ever got) have been the culprits as soon as I put the females in? And now that there are just these 2 left everything will return to normal??

 

[DaveyG]

*bump*

Any help?

 

[cowboy507]

i believe that what might be the problem is entirely with the guppies.
for males and females to go together well you will need 2 female for every male, this spreads out the harassment that the males have towards some females when they want to mate
now i think that the males themselves might have been also fighting for attention from the females and possibly might have killed each other.

what you can do if you want is get at least 2 more female
or you could wait until the females have fry and keep a better ratio of male to female. this will take long because you wont know the sex of the fish until about 6 months after they drop.

 

[waterdrop]

Yeah, it sure sounds like nipping was involved and sometimes in cases like this you have to get your whole family involved looking the tank at various hours to try and catch the purp in action! As said, there are various possibilities for how it is.. actually any of your fish including the guppies themseves would be possible! Sorry this has happened to you and hope somehow things will be getting back to normal.

~~waterdrop~~