Fin Nipping or Fin Rot?

I have a large tank, around 90 gallons. It's a peaceful community aquarium and has been for around 6 months. I brought in a new white male guppy and later found the aquarium I got it from had fish with ich. I caught it after seeing just a couple spots on two fish. I treated it with Microbe Lift Herbtana and it worked great, no more ich. However, during treatment I noticed a guppy with a little chunk out of his tail. Then another. Now most of my guppies have chunks missing or tears in their tails. Water parameters are all within the guppies normal zones.
All the guppies are male, I have nine of them. With them I have:
2 Scissortail Rasbora
4 Glass Catfish
2 female Platies
3 Panda Cory
2 Yoyo loach
1 Dojo loach
1 baby Albino bristlenose pleco
2 Candy cane Tetra
2 Neon Tetra
2 Penguin Tetra
2 Rummy nose Tetra
2 Glowlight Tetra
2 Black neon Tetra
2 Long fin serpae Tetra
1 Long fin Blue Danio
1 Longfin zebra Danio
Everyone was doing fine until recently. Could theyou possibly have fin rot, or is there a nipper in my tank? If I've got one, who is the culprit? I doubt my loaches or cories could be because they're very mellow and stay much lower than the gups. I had two male platies a month or so ago I caught chasing other fish and I moved the naughty boys. It's not the new gup because he's got it too. My Glowlight, neons, penguins, and rummynose school together and don't seem to bother anyone. Or if I have fin rot, what's the best method to treat them, and when, because they just finished their ich treatment. Everyone is well fed with granules, flakes, shrimp, and algae wafers. They get light during the day and dark at night. I have three filters that aerate the water.

i didn't read the whole post, all i will say is "fin nipping" would be very uncommon in a tank that size with the fish you have, your water conditions are most likely the culprit

For fin rot you just need to change 50 percent of the water every other day with NO medications.

Fin rot can be caused by an initial bite though and there are some problems with stocking. All tetras, rasboras, and danios need a group of at least 6. these fish are prone to nipping and stress ion if these needs are not fulfilled. Especially the danios.

Yo yo loaches should be kept in a group of 4-5 and may have nipped your fish.

Dojo loaches should be kept in a group of at least 10 and will be very shy and stressed with out others.

Within I do t know how you keep up with water changes on this tank as the platies, mollies, guppies, and Pleco have a very high bioload that can be very hard to keep up with if you do not have frequent water changes.

I would return the loaches and get 3 more cories of the same species. I am not sure what to do with all the tetras or if you LFS will even take them.

Fin nipping with a male only talk would be common as males will nip when no female is present. Get them some ladies lol


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Fin rot and maybe some nipping, all you need is lots of clean water,

A bit off topic but those tetras you keep in there with groups of two are shoaling fish and should ideally be in groups of 6+. Too often people say "they are alive so they must be fine" but truly they are stressed. I would recommend filling in your shoals.

same with loaches/corys

Jake3030 said:

A bit off topic but those tetras you keep in there with groups of two are shoaling fish and should ideally be in groups of 6+. Too often people say "they are alive so they must be fine" but truly they are stressed. I would recommend filling in your shoals.

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technically, every fish kept in an aquarium is stressed....does that mean we should stop keeping them all??

Stress occurs at different levels with fish just as it does with all animals including humans. We know that stress is a major factor in fish disease (just as it is in all animals again). Stress is the direct cause of 95% of all fish disease in an aquarium. Obviously the pathogen needs to be present, but in the vast majority of cases fish have ways to deal with them. When under stress however, they often cannot.

Stress first weakens the immune system, always. Secondary problems vary depending what the stress is. Energy needed for regular physiological functions like respiration, digestion, maintaining a stable pH relevant to the water, spawning, to name just a few of the obvious, is diverted from these functions in an attempt to deal with stress. This only increases the stress and further weakens the fish. The fish has a shorter lifespan if the stress is at a sufficiently high level and does not get resolved. And studies have now proven what many of us have been saying, that stress does cause increased aggression. And numbers present for a shoaling species is critical. I'll come back to this momentarily.

The fact that many of us have tanks of fish that live to and often beyond their normal expected lifespan indicates we must be ding something right to avoid or at least maintain a low level of stress. Many things cause stress; improper water parameters for the species, insufficient numbers, tankmates not compatible, aquascape not geared to what the fish expects in its environment, water currents, light...and others; the point being that there is a lot to think about when avoiding stress.

Shoaling fish expect to be in a shoal; this is programmed into their DNA over thousands of years of evolution. If we intend healthy fish, we must understand the expectations of each species and provide accordingly. The first (so far) scientific study on numbers found that when there were less than five of a shoaling species, the fish developed increased aggressive behaviours. Mildly aggressive fish (such as angelfish) became much more aggressive, while "peaceful" species like black neon tetras became aggressive to those within the group, and in some cases to other species. This is believed to be the result of the limited ways a fish can deal with stress; it either capitulates (weakens and dies) or it turns aggressive, but the shorter lifespan and death still occur as a direct long-term result of the stress.

Minimum numbers should be viewed as absolute minimum when something such as tank space prohibits additional fish of that species. Where space does exist, the numbers should be increased beyond the minimum. In the present situation, we have a large tank (90 gallons)so there is the opportunity to increase the numbers of the shoaling fish to acceptable levels. However, this is not the sole story; other factors such as the aquascape, parameters, and different species still factor in. I am not going into all that, as my post was intended to sort out the shoaling number relationship to stress. This is a very, very serious issue that must be resolved or the fish's stress will only exacerbate.