Gasping Guppy!

[Sasha]

Last week I noticed my 5 month old female guppy breathing heavy. I attempted to move her into my 29 gallon tank that just finished cycling, but while she was in a bag I realized that her breathing was more heavy. I released her back into my 2.5 gallon fry tank which has a bio filter, has been established for several months and the water chemisty is normal. The other fry in the same tank act perfectly healthy. She swims to the surface to eat, but immediatly heads to the bottom after her feed. I noticed her laying on the gravel and her gills continued to pump rapidly. Please, somebody help my poor girl!

 

[DeepSeaFishin]

I find that my guppies do that as well...if she is hanging @ the top gasping for air then you have a problem...if shes sitting on the problem its just a little constipation

 

[Sasha]

Well the guppy that I was concerned about died, but now another one is acting the same way. She's just laying on the bottom of the tank and her gills are pumping rapidly. Could the probelm be gill flukes?

 

[gto_cowgirl]

Well i don't know anything about gill flukes but is your water temperture high? I would go ahead and add an extra airstone or bubbler in the tank. Sounds to me they are having a problem breathing.

Also, did you just recently do a water change when the fish started acting this way? As it may be chlorine poisoning if thats the case.

 

[Sasha]

I released the young guppy into my newly cycled 29 gallon tank and dropped an air stone in to add more oxygen into the water. She's still breathing a bit hard, but not as much as she was in the fry tank. I'm glad she's swimming around and not laying on the botton anymore.

The temperature in the fry tank is 78 degrees and is kept steady with a small heater. I do water changes once every week and add water condintioner to eliminate any chlorine. The breathing probelms started last week and I did nothing unusual that might have caused this.

 

[gto_cowgirl]

Well it sounds like she is a little better with the airstone but also sounds like it may be something worse if she is still breathing pretty hard. I would look into a disease chart and try to figure it out as i have no experience in that problem and this is what i would do.

Fish Disease Link


The only one that i can see with the sytoms of rapid breathing is the gill worms. But i would advise trying to catch your female to hold her in front of you with the net and look for any other sytoms.