Needing help identifying Guppy sickness please.

SDollery

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I have had my 4ft aquarium for about 6 weeks now and have only a few fish in it. I cycled my tank correctly before adding fish. Now my guppies have started getting sick and dying. So far it has killed 4 females with another 2 currently infected. It starts by being white and swollen between the fishes scales, usually behind the dorsal fin but before the tail. It progresses to the scales coming off and a wound appearing. Please help me identify what it could be before my last 3 female's die. The darker Guppy is the most recently infected in the tank and has had symptoms for 3 days.
 

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It's a bacterial infection.

Wipe the inside of the glass down with a clean sponge.

Do a 75% water change and gravel clean the substrate.
Make sure any new water is free of chlorine/ chloramine before it's added to the tank.

Clean the filter if it hasn't been done in the last 2 weeks.
Wash filter media/ materials ina bucket of tank water and re-use them.

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You can add rock salt (often sold as aquarium salt), sea salt or swimming pool salt to the aquarium at the dose rate of 2 heaped tablespoon per 20 litres of water.

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 4 heaped tablespoons per 20 litres.

Keep the salt level like this for at least 2 weeks but no longer than 4 weeks otherwise kidney damage can occur. Kidney damage is more likely to occur in fish from soft water (tetras, Corydoras, angelfish, gouramis, loaches) that are exposed to high levels of salt for an extended period of time, and is not an issue with livebearers, rainbowfish or other salt tolerant species.

The salt will not affect the beneficial filter bacteria but the higher dose rate will affect some plants. The lower dose rate will not affect plants.

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.

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If there's no improvement after 2 days with salt, then add a broad spectrum fish medication that treats bacteria, fungus and protozoan infections.
 

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