Female guppy acting strange...

DancingBetta

Fish Crazy
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My guppy has been lying on bottom of tank. She seems very skinny and is opening and closing her mouth... she might be stressed because we have a lot of males in the tank (a guppy gave birth the day we got her, and we will give some of them back to the pet store) She is the only one doing this. Any idea what is wrong?
 
She is dying from either poor water quality or a microsporidian infection.

Test your water quality for ammonia, nitrite, nitrate and pH.

Do a 75% water change and gravel clean the substrate every day for a week.
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. However, don't clean it if the filter is less than 6 weeks old. When you do clean the filter, wash filter media/ materials in a bucket of tank water and re-use the media. Tip the bucket of dirty water on the lawn/ garden.

Add salt, (see directions below).

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SALT
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 (4 heaped tablespoons per 20 litres) will affect some plants and some snails. The lower dose rate will not affect plants, shrimp or snails.

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.
 
The poor girl passed away. I found her lying behind a decoration. She had lost all color except for a small part of her tail. Her face looked kind of strange. :(
 

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