Guppy with parasite or tumor

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ErinG

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I was looking at my tank and realized that my guppy has something growing from his side right below the fin. It looks like some kind of parasite or tumor growing. It is a little hard to see in the photo, but it is maybe half a cm long and thin. The area right around the thing looks a little swollen. He is very active and seems fine, but he is spending a lot of time at the top of the tank. What is this? Is it something I should be worried about? How do I treat it?

About the tank:

10 gallons, mix of guppies and tetras 6 fish total
weekly 10-15% water changes
Feed fish flakes from an automatic feeder 3 times a day

GH 180
KH 80
pH 7.5
Nitrite .5
Nitrate 30
 

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Hi and welcome to the forum :)

I can't see anything on the body that you are describing. The fish does look skinny and appears to have gill flukes and probably has intestinal worms too. It also has a piece taken out of the tail (at the top half of the tail). The damaged tail has some red in it, which might be blood or a bacterial infection. It looks like blood to me but you will have to monitor it.

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You need to check the ammonia levels and do a 75% water change and gravel clean the substrate any day you have an ammonia or nitrite reading above 0, or a nitrate reading above 20ppm.
Make sure any new water is free of chlorine/ chloramine before it's added to the tank.

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For the gill flukes and possible bacterial infection in the tail, you can add rock salt (often sold as aquarium salt), sea salt or swimming pool salt to the aquarium at the dose rate of 1 heaped tablespoon per 20 litres of water. If there is no improvement after 48 hours you can double that dose rate so there is 2 heaped tablespoons of salt per 20 litres. If there's no improvement in the tail after 1 week of salt, post another picture and we can look at medications.

If you only have livebearers (guppies, platies, swordtails, mollies), goldfish or rainbowfish in the tank you can double that dose rate, so you would add 2 heaped tablespoons per 20 litres and if there is no improvement after 48 hours, then increase it so there is a total of 4 heaped tablespoons of salt per 20 litres.

Keep the salt level like this for at least 2 weeks but no longer than 4 weeks otherwise kidney damage can occur. Kidney damage is more likely to occur in fish from soft water (tetras, Corydoras, angelfish, gouramis, loaches) that are exposed to high levels of salt for an extended period of time, and is not an issue with livebearers, rainbowfish or other salt tolerant species.

The salt will not affect the beneficial filter bacteria but the higher dose rate will affect some plants. The lower dose rate will not affect plants.

After you use salt and the fish have recovered, you do a 10% water change each day for a week using only fresh water that has been dechlorinated. Then do a 20% water change each day for a week. Then you can do bigger water changes after that. This dilutes the salt out of the tank slowly so it doesn't harm the fish.

If you do a water change when treating with salt, you should treat the new water with salt before adding it to the tank.
 
30ppm is too high for your nitrate. Do the water changes as Colin instructed along with the salt. If you do a 50% water change while using the salt then add 50% of the salt dose back in, not the original full dose. Good luck!
 

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