Frayed Fin On Guppy. Help Please.

[lockwoodhorne]

Hi Fishy-Followers nice to meet you all.

I hate to come here with tales (tails!) of woe on my first post, but I just can't seem to find the right advice.

To start, I have 2 x Zebra Danios and HAD 4 x guppies. The guppy in question was a real fancy one, a Red Cobra I believe - he HAD only been in the tank less than 48 hours before we found him this morning stuck to the filter intake with his tail fin completely frayed.

It started fraying a few hours after we put him in the tank, does anybody know why? We seems to have an orange guppy that is showing some agressive behaviour and bullying, but I never noticed any fin-nippuing, and the fin "spines" look complete.

I'm pretty sure that this little fella is not going to survive the day, but I am really curious as to why this may have happened.

Please Help

 

[Kizz]

Very sorry

First off what size is your tank ?
Do you know what your water stat's are ? IE PH Ammonia NitrAte & NitrIte?
How long has tank been set up?
Did you cycle it ? and How ?

If you can tell us the above we'll be on the right road to tell you how to rectify the problem

 

[OldMan47]

Welcome to the forum Lockwoodhorne.

As Kizz said, we can help much more if we can get an idea what your tank is like and what the water chemistry is. Quite often a local fish shop will do some hand waving and say things like everything is fine or maybe some particular item is a bit high, here add this to the tank. That kind of statement is not at all useful in evaluating the situation, we will want some actual numbers.

The history of the tank will also help us sometimes when you don't have all of the numbers or if the numbers look good as a snapshot but are likely to be changing quickly.

 

[lockwoodhorne]

Very sorry

First off what size is your tank ?
Do you know what your water stat's are ? IE PH Ammonia NitrAte & NitrIte?
How long has tank been set up?
Did you cycle it ? and How ?

If you can tell us the above we'll be on the right road to tell you how to rectify the problem

Tank size is 63 Litres, it's been set up for 1-month. I cycled the tank using Hagan Cycle and 2 x Zebra Danios. I have been checking the Nitrite and Ammonia levels using a test kit that changes from yellow (low) to red (high) and it seems very low. Water temperature is about 26 degrees, although it is summer and we live in a warm flat, the temp has touched 28. His tail just started to fray after about 4 hours form the top of his tail fin.

 

[OldMan47]

Most likely situation is that you had a tank that was maybe cycled for the 2 zebras and then added 4 fish which means that suddenly you tripled the biological load. Even if the ammonia processors kept up fairly well with the change, the nitrite processors are not as resilient and probably fell behind. If you test for nitrites, I expect that you will find the nitrites have spiked. The solution is fairly simple and should show rapid improvement of the guppies. Do at least a 50% water change and maybe even 2 water changes that size to get the nitrites down. Nitrites will make the fish listless because it robs them of oxygen in their blood stream. Don't forget to use the dechlorinator for the new water and try to roughly match the temperature of the new water to the temperature of the tank water. I had to do a couple of emergency 80% water changes on one of my tanks last night because a filter clone that I did failed. This morning the fish in that tank look much better but I will probably do another water change that big this evening.

 

[lockwoodhorne]

Most likely situation is that you had a tank that was maybe cycled for the 2 zebras and then added 4 fish which means that suddenly you tripled the biological load. Even if the ammonia processors kept up fairly well with the change, the nitrite processors are not as resilient and probably fell behind. If you test for nitrites, I expect that you will find the nitrites have spiked. The solution is fairly simple and should show rapid improvement of the guppies. Do at least a 50% water change and maybe even 2 water changes that size to get the nitrites down. Nitrites will make the fish listless because it robs them of oxygen in their blood stream. Don't forget to use the dechlorinator for the new water and try to roughly match the temperature of the new water to the temperature of the tank water. I had to do a couple of emergency 80% water changes on one of my tanks last night because a filter clone that I did failed. This morning the fish in that tank look much better but I will probably do another water change that big this evening.

Thanks for the advice - I tested nitrate levels this morning and they didn't show a noticable spike, the fish have only been in the tank less than 48 hours. Just seems really weird.

 

[OldMan47]

That is nitrite with an i, not nitrate. Nitrates are fairly safe n large numbers but nitrites are poisonous at 0.25 ppm.

 

[lockwoodhorne]

That is nitrite with an i, not nitrate. Nitrates are fairly safe n large numbers but nitrites are poisonous at 0.25 ppm.

Sorry for showing my ignorance - but I have a test kit (API freshwater Nitrate test kit) I must buy a nitrite test kit too?

 

[m00se]

Grab the API master test kit (about £20-25 quid from your LFS or about £18 on ebay). It'll last you a year, and it tests for pH, Ammonia, Nitrite, and Nitrate.

 

[lockwoodhorne]

Grab the API master test kit (about £20-25 quid from your LFS or about £18 on ebay). It'll last you a year, and it tests for pH, Ammonia, Nitrite, and Nitrate.

Thanks - I think it's already too late for my little guppy though. Do you think that nitrite levels would have caused such a dramatic decline in one fish or do you think I may have bought a sick one?

I'm now really concerned for the other tank mates - I'm becoming strangely attached to my 2 little tank cycling Danios.

 

[OldMan47]

If you are back down to your original cycling stock level, things may start to improve but a 50% daily water change will usually be enough even if you have no way to do the testing.