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unknown Guppy disease - can't figure out the problem

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RachelsAnimals

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Hi everyone and thank you so much for your help already!
I need help with my guppies.
I have a 240l tank with a huge group of guppies who have been living and breeding with me for over a year In a ca. 60l tank. The tank also houses 10 corydoras (8 of them come from the same 60 l tank before and are with me for around a year as well)

I upgraded them to their new tank ca 2 months ago, the tank had cycled in, was well planted at the time and is running a canister filter from Sera for up to 300 L as well as a co2 pump.
I decreased the temperature from 25° Celsius (77°F) to 23° (73F) as I read that that's a better temp for the Cory's.
Everything seemed to be fine and then I got 3 new guppies and 2 new Cory's and made thr mistake to not quarantine them properly. I got them around 4 weeks ago and just a couple of days later my issues started.

First one of the new guppies was very often lying on the floor kf the tank but when he was swimming he looked fine, ate well and I couldn't see signs of spots or vinrot or anything else.
The behavior continued for a couple of days and some of the other guppies seemed to not swim as much and as fast anymore as before so I started treating the tank with esh2000 (a general medicine against bacteria, vinrot and some other things). I treated the tank as per description for 3 days. The last day of that was 4 days ago. The next day - 3 more guppies looked sick, are swimming slow and their tail Vin looks weird, like not really rotten or such, but as if they were like tucking it in - its super thin and not like a fan anymore but just small and thin and wrong. I had quarantine tank setup - I know that was a big mistake :/ I am cycling one in now but I don't think I can put the guppies over within the next weeks as it's completely fresh. I found one guppy dead this morning - one of the 3 new ones and more and more others are looking bad. Does anyone have any idea what I could do / has experienced anything similar ?

I am getting another medicine for vin rot today as thats the only thing I can think of that looks a bit similar. I have also raised the temp to 25° Celsius again and am hoping that could help.

Sorry for the super long post and thank you so much for anyone who has any idea/ tips / experiences to share 💜

I tried to make pictures, but my camera won't focus on the guppies. This is the one where i can see the symptoms worst in real life.
 

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The fish have what we creatively used to call "clamping". The meds will not help, as you don't know what it is. You are self-medicating, not fish medicating. It really feels awful when a disease gets in and we can do nothing, and a lot of med use is to make us feel like we are acting. We've all done it - tried something blind because we care. It's an important thing to unlearn., as it often does more harm than good.

What to do? Not much I'd expect to be effective. QT would have caught it, but it's on the loose now. Is it viral? Gram negative or gram positive bacteria? We can only guess.

In the end, no matter what meds are thrown in, chances are you will ride it out and your tank will suffer serious losses. My local store used to lose entire tanks of guppies soon after arrival, until they found a supplier whose fish were healthy. You're describing what I saw there, but while the owner was a biologist, they never were able to conclusively identify what was hitting the fish so hard.
 
Thank you so much for your answer! It indeed feels horrible when those things happen and your are right,I am probably rather self medicating, trying to work against my own guilt as i should be experienced enough to know that. But really thank you for reassuring me and understanding! I will keep doing big water changes for now, the medication indeed doesn't seem to have any effect so i have stopped it now.
And i will learn from it, i hope some of my babies make it and i hope my corys won't get infected as well. And if i hopefully ever get it out again, from now on, i will always have a quarantine tank running and not bring any fish in without proper quarantine anymore .....
 
I bought some fish not long ago, and they wiped out in QT. That doesn't feel any better - just as frustrating and powerless. But when something is carried into an established tank with fish you like, that stings.
I have some wild caught Corydoras in QT now, from a dealer I had never before bought from. One of the 3 species (I have a fishroom so they are QTed separately) were very rough. I have gotten them into a shape where I think they'll survive and flourish, but it has taken a couple of weeks and will take a couple more. But they were wild caught. If they had been farm raised, I'll wager they'd be dead now. You're describing what local store people call 'fish farm guppy crashes'. We don't get the best fish from the pet stores.
 

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