New guppy mama

[GuppyMama1234]

Hello friends! I have several tanks with different tropical community fish, danios, neon tetras, mollies, a pleco, am angel fish but mostly guppies. Recently my husband and I are trying to breed our guppies. We are here to make new friends and learn new things!

 

[Colin_T]

Hi and welcome to the forum

Are your tanks looking a bit cloudy or is that my cataracts?

 

[GuppyMama1234]

It IS cloudy!!! I have used clarifying solution but it is still cloudy. I have a sick guppy as well I will include a picture. 2 fish have died this week. I just tested my tanks and all levels were good except AMMONIA, I am getting a very high ammonia reading! What should I do?

 

[Colin_T]

The cloudy water and ammonia suggest there is uneaten food rotting in the tank and the filter has not developed. The best treatment for this is big daily water changes. Change 75% of the tank water and gravel clean the substrate any day you have an ammonia or nitrite reading above 0ppm, or a nitrate reading above 20ppm.
Make sure any new water is free of chlorine/ chloramine before it's added to the tank.

Reduce feeding to 2-3 times a week until the filters have established. This usually takes around 4-6 weeks but can sometimes take longer. Don't worry, the fish won't starve during this time.

When the filters have established, you can feed them once a day and do a 75% water change and gravel clean the substrate once a week.

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The white film over the guppy, and dropping fins is excess caused by poor water quality and should clear up after a few water changes.

 

[GuppyMama1234]

Thank you so much! I am working on a water change as we speak! Thank goodness guppies are so hardy. I should have tested the water sooner.

 

[Colin_T]

Guppies aren't hardy these days. They are inbred and suffer from all sorts of problems. If you want to keep them alive for long periods of time, try to keep the pH around 7.0 and the GH around 200ppm.

You can find the GH on your water supply company's website or by telephoning them. You can also take a glass full of tap water into your local pet shop and get them to test it. Find out what the results are in too, because they vary depending on what the test is measure in. (eg: ppm, dGH or something else).

 

[GuppyMama1234]

Okay I had never heard of GH before! We have spring water here. I will take a vial to the pet store tomorrow and see what they can tell me. I tested my spring water for nitrite, nitrate, PH and ammonia and everything was good there. The PH in my big tank was around 7.6, is that an ideal PH?

 

[Colin_T]

A pH of 7.6 is normally ideal for guppies. However, when a tank is cycling, any ammonia in the water becomes very toxic when the pH is above 7.0. The higher the pH, the more toxic it becomes.

We don't normally recommend changing the pH so just do big daily water changes until the ammonia is down to 0ppm.

 

[GuppyMama1234]

Other than doing the water changes, do we need to do anything else to get this situation under control? Also, would it be a good idea to add some aquarium salt after I complete the change?

 

[Colin_T]

Just do water changes for now.

If you want to add some salt you can but the fish should get better with clean water. If you do want to buy some salt, get rock salt (aka aquarium salt, swimming pool salt). It's sodium chloride without anything else added to it.

Avoid table salt because it usually has iodine and anti-caking agents in it and these can harm the fish.

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The dose rate for salt is 1-2 heaped tablespoons of rock salt per 20 litres of water. Keep the salt in the tank for 2-4 weeks then stop using it.

When you do water changes while using salt, you need to add salt to the new water before adding it to the tank so the salinity (salt level) in the tank remains stable.

After you have used salt, do a 10% water change each day for a week using dechlorinated water that contains no salt. Then do a 20% water change each day for a week using dechlorinated water that contains no salt. After that you can do bigger water changes.

The small daily water changes dilute the salt out of the tank slowly so there is less stress on the fish.

Having said this, do water changes first and save salt for treating sick fish. Don't add salt unless the fish are sick.

 

[GuppyMama1234]

Thank you so much for your guidance! It has been most helpful : ) I re-tested the ammonia after the first 75% water change and it had lowered from about 2.0 to around 1.0 and the fish already seem to have some life back in them. Going to do another 75% change this afternoon and go from there! My fish thank you!

 

[Freshwater Sucker Fish]

You're in good hands with @ collin_T Welcome to the forms I too started out breading guppies and now I have a ton and upgraded to a 55 gal tank just the other day. In other words, u came to the right place

 

[GuppyMama1234]

We have went “tank crazy”! It all started with a 20 gallon and now it has turned in to a 10, 2 20’s, a 29 and a 37. Do you think we have enough fish tanks? I’m just worried we don’t have enough fish tanks!

 

[Freshwater Sucker Fish]

when I started I had 4 20 gal tanks two broke so sad

honestly, I don't think there is such a thing as too many tanks. unless your house foundation cant hold any more weight LOL

 

[GuppyMama1234]

We looked at a 200 gallon tank a couple weeks ago but decided that since we didn’t want to buy another house to put it in, what we had would have to suffice I AM looking for a small tank to use as a quarantine tank but I think we will just get a 5 gallon or less and that way I can put it anywhere in the house