Please Help!

[Miss_Donna]

ok i got a really sick guppy yesterday she had white fur growing on her today all her scales are raised and she is hiding away not looking good at all.

Any ideas what it is or could be and what to do



Fluval Roma 200 litre......

Inhabitants......

7 Guppies

4 Platys

1 Clown Loach

1 Sucker Fish

2 fry

Water Stats......(just done)

Ammonia - 0ppm

NO2 - 0ppm

NO3 - 5.o

PH high - 7.8

 

[Miss_Donna]

i've segragated her from the others

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

If her scales have pine coned and she has white fur on her then it sounds like she has both dropsy and fish fungus, the dropsy is particularly bad news if her scales have pine coned, to be honest she doesn't have a good chance of recovering if this has happened (dropsy is kidney failure)- personally i would euthanise her.

It is definitely still worth while reviewing the main tank though to help prevent the other fish falling ill like this- when was the last time you cleaned the tank and how do you go about cleaning your tank usually and how often? What type of sucker fish do you have and does it ever display any aggression towards the other fish? Have you added any chemicals or medications to the tank recently, and what do you usually feed the fish and how much/often?

 

[Miss_Donna]

Ok cleaning ... i do a 20% water change every week using a aquarium vaccum adding interpet fresh start to the water i also use a algae scraper thing. and test water weekly

No chemicals added apart from the fresh start..

i feed them on tetramin flake food 5 times a week once a day and give a small pinch then they have tetra fresh delica whole bloodworms once a week i give them half the packet (and they demolish it)

and the sucker is a pl*co he gets half an algae tab 5 times a week..

Hope this helps



And how do you eunthanise a fish

 

[ccskitten]

Hi Miss Donna

Wilder gave me this advice on euthanising a fish

If she looks like she suffering might be best to end it for her.
Jug of very cold water and add icecubes till the water freezing cold.
If not ice cubes add the jug to the freezer till a thin sheet of ice forms.
Place the fish in the water should take about thirty second for the fish to die.
Leave the fish a while to make sure it's passed on.
Make sure the gills are not moving.

It sounds like the best way to do it to me. Aparantly when you freeze your body shuts down but you get a feeling of euphoria just before you go to sleep!!

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

The feeding and cleaning regime sounds fine . I would advise treating the main tank though with an anti internal bacterial medication as a precaution though as dropsy can be internal bacterial in nature (fortunately though dropsy is generally not very infectious)- it can be caused by many other things though (like tumors/cancer in the fish, water quality problems, unwanted chemicals in the tank water, NTD and Fish TB etc).

As to eunhanising fish, for a small fish like a guppy personally what i do is get a small bowl of water and put it in the freezer long enough for it to develop ice completely covering the surface of the water- i then take the bowl out, break the ice on the surface, and immediately put the guppy in the bowl. The temperature shock to the guppy will kill it in less than 10 seconds- i've used this method many times on guppys many times and it is guaranteed to kill the guppy quickly and with no mess.
There are a lot of other humane methods of euthanasia, like the clove oil or decapitation methods, and there are many threads on this sort of stuff if you want to check out further options- the temperature shock method is just one method i personally use on small fish like guppys.

ps: (for those others who might be reading this thread though, the temperature shock method is only advised for small fish like guppys, platys, neon tetras etc- nothing exceeding 2inches in length).

 

[Miss_Donna]

Ok so i guess its the end of the road for her.... I feel like a murderer

Any advice on what brand would be best to treat the tank as i've only got anti white spot thanks again

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

Ok so i guess its the end of the road for her.... I feel like a murderer

Any advice on what brand would be best to treat the tank as i've only got anti white spot thanks again

"Anti internal bacteria" by Interpet is a good brand . Try not to feel bad about euthanising her though- once dropsy infected fishes scales have pine coned out there's only like a 2% chance they'll recover (this is because the kidneys by this stage have usually suffered too much damage from the bloating to recover), the fish is pretty much doomed by this stage (and the fact that she also also has fish fungus, probably a secondary infection in this case, is not good news), so humanely putting her to sleep is the best course of action to preventing her suffer any longer.

Sometimes fish are just born weaker than others and fall ill, if you have a good tank cleaning & feeding regime, stock the tank properly, keep the water quality good and make a good habitat in general for the fish to live in etc, then there isn't much else you can do prevent these sorts of fish falling ill- guppys in particular are not as hardy as they used to be.