Is this fin rot? What to do?

[joelfernandes]

Hey all.

I noticed one of my guppies had damage on her caudal fin. I took it out from the main tank, and it's now in a separate tank with only cherry shrimps.

From the picture, is it possible to tell if it's fin rot? Or could it be because of some aggression from other fish? In the same tank, I do have quite a few male guppies, three swordtails, one molly, six corys and two neons. No other fish shows any damaged fins. If this is indeed fin rot, what should I do, and is it safe to keep it with shrimps?

 

[GaryE]

That fish looks injured to me. Infection's always a danger, so I would do water changes aggressively for a few weeks.

In my experience. fin rot is rare outside of unmaintained, polluted water. Most of the fin rot I see new aquarists treating with meds is damage that could be cured with good fishkeeping routines - largely with adequate water changes.

That is an odd looking fish.

 

[joelfernandes]

Are you suggesting just doing water changes for now? Maybe daily?

 

[Colin_T]

Test the water for ammonia, nitrite, nitrate and pH. Post the results in numbers here.

Wipe the inside of the glass down with a clean fish sponge. This removes the biofilm on the glass and the biofilm will contain lots of harmful bacteria, fungus, protozoans and various other microscopic life forms.

Do a 75-80% water change and gravel clean the substrate. The water change and gravel cleaning will reduce the number of disease organisms in the water and provide a cleaner environment for the fish to recover in. It also removes a lot of the gunk and this means any medication can work on treating the fish instead of being wasted killing the pathogens in the gunk.
Make sure any new water is free of chlorine/ chloramine before it is added to the tank.

Clean the filter if it hasn't been done in the last 2 weeks. However, if the filter is less than 6 weeks old, do not clean it. Wash the filter materials/ media in a bucket of tank water and re-use the media. Tip the bucket of dirty water on the garden/ lawn. Cleaning the filter means less gunk and cleaner water with fewer pathogens so any medication (if needed) will work more effectively on the fish.

Increase surface turbulence/ aeration to maximise the dissolved oxygen in the water.

Add some salt, (see directions below).

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You can add rock salt (often sold as aquarium salt), swimming pool salt, or any non iodised salt (sodium chloride) to the aquarium at the dose rate of 1 heaped tablespoon per 20 litres (5 gallons) 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 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 2 weeks.

The salt will not affect the beneficial filter bacteria, fish, plants, shrimp or snails.

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 water changes while using salt, you need to treat the new water with salt before adding it to the tank. This will keep the salt level stable in the tank and minimise stress on the fish.

When you first add salt, add the salt to a small bucket of tank water and dissolve the salt. Then slowly pour the salt water into the tank near the filter outlet. Add the salt over a couple of minutes.