Older guppy with strange swim issue

An older female guppy of mine simply cant swim down; Its as if shes too full of air, though she stays upright, no matter how she tries she cannot stop floating back up, is there anything I could do?

Kinda sounds like swim bladder disease.. could be caused by overfeeding and constipation, or gulping air when eating at the surface. Not sure but.. that would be my guess..

Unfortunately (and fortunately) I've never had to deal with this before, have just read about it a bit..

Someone will come along with more answers, but for now to give them a better idea of your tank - can you provide more info.?

Is it a cycled tank? What are your water parameters looking like? How big is it and how is the stocking? What's your feeding schedule like? Etc. Etc., The more details you can provide the better =]

Sorry to hear about your guppy though =[

Right, Ive had this tank for a little under a year after upgrading from a 10 gallon I had for over 5 years; Its a 20 gallon high with a Penn Plax cascade 200, with a female betta, 8 or so adult guppies(perhaps 2 handfuls of very young fry, i clean out their box twice a week) 8 neon tetras, an 3 nerite snails, I cycled the tank for 2 weeks before adding fish even though my water was from my old tank and so was some biomedia and the sand to kickstart it, I've had all the fish in it for the rest of the time and this one and one other that passed have been the only 2 to have anything but a minor bacterial problem that I cleared up when it first got fish in it. Water changes weekly, about 25 percent, every 2 weeks or so Ill do a 50 percent just because I like cleaning up after my plants. Let me know if I need to add anything else and yes I know its a beefy filter, I like em clean.

@Colin_T sorry if it's not you, but I think a while back @NCaquatics said you're pretty good at figuring stuff like this out, wondered your opinion?

stop feeding it dry food for a week and see if it improves. if the fish can swim normally after a week without dry food, then it's air in the intestine caused by the dry food and ingesting air while feeding at the surface.

if the problem persists after a week on frozen and live foods, then it's probably a swim bladder issue and there's no cure for that.

Ah, that sounds reasonable. May I ask what I should try feeding her instead? I'm new to the problems associated with fish keeping

Sardonicism said:

Ah, that sounds reasonable. May I ask what I should try feeding her instead? I'm new to the problems associated with fish keeping

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You could try frozen brine shrimp, bloodworms or daphnia (or live).

With frozen brine shrimp cubes, I like to take the serrated edge of a butter knife to scrape off a bit at a time (it will thaw quickly, only takes a scrape or 2 and shaking it off into the tank for a good amount of it). Depends on what your feeding though, I have low stock in my tank and so it doesn't take much.

This is an old fish reaching the end of it's life