Guppies more prone to disease?

[catwoman]

I have a couple of female guppies in a 75 gal community tank. We religiously do a water change every week but we do have large boisterously fish that eat a lot like silver dollors and clown loaches in there. Nitrates are usually around 20-40ppm and I am sure there is a lot of gunk that we can't get to under rocks, behind plants, etc. One of the female guppies had fungus last month that I treated with PimaFix. Now one is bloated and appears to have dropsy. All the other fish are fine and never get sick including the Rummy Nose tetra which are delicate fish. Are the guppies just more prone to disease? They were just feeder guppies from Petsmart that hitched a ride home one day but I've had them for about 6months in this tank. I am just worried as I've read that dropsy is a sign of poor water quality and I thought we were doing pretty good with maintenance. We have an Aquaclear 500 on the tank and that gets cleaned at least once a month.

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

The only way to surely know that your water quality is good is to test it for nitrites and ammonia; are your guppys fancy ones by any chance? Do you gravel vac your tank or do anything similar once a week other than water changes? How much water do you take out on average per week i.e 30 or 40%?

 

[WILDER]

Guppys have been inbred to much and they is no go in them anymore, very prone to desease in the bacteria infections as well as parasites.
http/www.petfish.net/dropsy.htm

 

[catwoman]

Yeah, we vacuum the gravel every week and change about 30-40% of the water. There is lots of driftwood and rocks and so it's hard to get around them. The guppies are just those common guppies you get at Petsmart for 10cents each. They hitched a ride when they were tiny babies in a bag of oto's. I just kept them in a small tank until they were big enough to throw in the big tank. There is a male too but he is in a different tank and he seems to be doing well.

 

[WILDER]

I've given up on guppys kept them twice, but never managed to have them long, but some fishkeepers do have luck with them, hope you do with yours, good luck.

 

[catwoman]

Thanks. I never wanted to keep guppies but once they hitched a ride, I had to keep them. I am mostly concerned there is bacteria in the water that might harm my other fish but if the guppies just have poor immune systems, I won't worry about it too much. The water here is soft. Do guppies like hard water?

I just did some water tests:

nitrate 10
ammonia 0
nitrite 0
phosphate 1
KH 2
PH 7.2

 

[WILDER]

Just a few daily wagter changes if you are worried, good luck.