What on earth is killing my beloved guppies?

spleenharvester · May 17, 2021

Hi everyone.

A few months ago, a relatively new guppy developed odd symptoms - long stringy white poop and unsteady swimming near the top of the tank. This continued for about 1-2 months (I had thought it was constipation at first). By the time we realised that it was some kind of infection, the guppy was already half dead, and passed away after beginning treatment.

A week later, exactly the same symptoms appeared in a second guppy. We immediately isolated it this time and treated with anti-bacteria and anti-parasite (flubendazole) for a week. It appeared to have made a full recovery and was reintroduced. Unfortunately a few days later it pineconed and suddenly died, unsure what exactly killed it.

I started carpet bombing the whole tank with flubendazole for a week to try and kill any residual infectious agents. Sadly though we're now seeing symptoms in a third and fourth guppy, and I'm at a loss for what to do. Below is a 320X magnification of white stringy poop from one of these guppies. I cannot find any worms, but there are tons of these little round egg-like things (blue arrow). They don't match any image I can find on the internet though.

Any ideas?

mark4785 · May 17, 2021

White stringy poo appears when the fish has had a motion but there are no solids to expel so it passes just mucous. More often than not fish will not eat when conditions are not appropriate such as being chased, wrong temperature/pH or a build up of bacteria from rotting food.

I would recommend testing your ammonia and nitrite and ensuring they are at 0 ppm. If they are, I recommend gradually upping your tank temperature to 30 C over 24 hours for 2-3 days to encourage the fish to eat. You may want to consider slowly adding some aquarium salt over 2-3 days until you reach 3g per litre as this will de-stress the fish and likely disrupt what appear to be eggs in the microscopy photo.

Flubendazole is very ineffective at dealing with worms; it has never worked for me.

kribensis12 · May 18, 2021

While I agree with @mark4785 on what the clear/white stringy poo is - I disagree with the course of action.

While Aquarium Salt can, in some cases, be helpful (such as treating fin rot), I do not believe that it will help in this situation.

Without tank parameters (Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrate), my best guess is that it is related to an intestinal worms which are fairly common in the aquarium trade unfortunately. I am based in the US, so I do not know what exact forms of medication you have but I would look for some iteration of Praziquantel or Metronidazole. I have had better success with Metro, but I know some who have success with Praziquantel (commonly referred to as PraziPro).

If there are worms and they are "dewormed", there is in an increased chance of a bacterial infection in the fish, as the worms likely damaged the intestine of the fish. I am not one to use antibiotics on my fish unless it's dire, but some people treat preventatively to ensure there are no issues. In my experience, if the worms were bad enough that after treatment the fish gets a nasty infection - it's probable that the fish was not going to survive due to the damage of the worms anyway.

I hope this is helpful and feel free to use Google and other members advice to determine care.

Essjay · May 18, 2021

There are three meds used for intestinal worms, and all three are available in the UK.

Flubendazole treats both flat worms (tape worms) and round worms (eg camallanus worms).
Flubendazole is in NT Labs Anti Fluke & Wormer and Maidenhead Aquatics own brand AquaCare Anti Fluke & Wormer (possibly the same product)
It is also in Kusuri Wormer Plus but this is a powder meant for large tanks and it is difficult to measure the small dose needed for small tanks.

Praziquantel treats flat worms and is in eSHa gdex

Levamisole treats round worms and is in eSHa ndx

Metronidazole treats intestinal protozoan infections but is not available in the UK without prescription.

We can't get antibiotics without prescription either. If you want to treat for possible secondary infections, I would try either eSHa 2000 or Myxazin by Waterlife.

Colin_T · May 18, 2021

(265) What to do if your fish has Stringy White Poop. | Tropical Fish Forums

spleenharvester · May 18, 2021

Thank you all for your much appreciated replies. First things first - water parameters are all fine, 0/0/10 for the usual three and pH @ 7.5. Everything has been the same since the tank was established, except for water hardness which has dropped, but nothing that really explains these symptoms.

mark4785 said:
White stringy poo appears when the fish has had a motion but there are no solids to expel so it passes just mucous. More often than not fish will not eat when conditions are not appropriate such as being chased, wrong temperature/pH or a build up of bacteria from rotting food.

I would recommend testing your ammonia and nitrite and ensuring they are at 0 ppm. If they are, I recommend gradually upping your tank temperature to 30 C over 24 hours for 2-3 days to encourage the fish to eat. You may want to consider slowly adding some aquarium salt over 2-3 days until you reach 3g per litre as this will de-stress the fish and likely disrupt what appear to be eggs in the microscopy photo.

Flubendazole is very ineffective at dealing with worms; it has never worked for me.

The fish all seem to be eating normally and not losing weight, which for a parasite I know is odd. Salt was another one I'd considered but unfortunately there are also otos in the tank, and to my understanding they don't cope with salt very well. I was considering isolating in the bucket again, but I think I'd have to move all 9 guppies into the bucket and I'm not sure it's really got enough space. Only two are symptomatic but I think I can reasonably assume the whole tank is contagious.

kribensis12 said:
While I agree with @mark4785 on what the clear/white stringy poo is - I disagree with the course of action.

While Aquarium Salt can, in some cases, be helpful (such as treating fin rot), I do not believe that it will help in this situation.

Without tank parameters (Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrate), my best guess is that it is related to an intestinal worms which are fairly common in the aquarium trade unfortunately. I am based in the US, so I do not know what exact forms of medication you have but I would look for some iteration of Praziquantel or Metronidazole. I have had better success with Metro, but I know some who have success with Praziquantel (commonly referred to as PraziPro).

If there are worms and they are "dewormed", there is in an increased chance of a bacterial infection in the fish, as the worms likely damaged the intestine of the fish. I am not one to use antibiotics on my fish unless it's dire, but some people treat preventatively to ensure there are no issues. In my experience, if the worms were bad enough that after treatment the fish gets a nasty infection - it's probable that the fish was not going to survive due to the damage of the worms anyway.

I hope this is helpful and feel free to use Google and other members advice to determine care.

RE bacterial infection, yeah this is what I was thinking as well. The one that recovered and then promptly died I did think looked more like a bacterial infection, poop looked mostly normal. I might treat preventatively if I wind up in the same situation then.

Essjay said:
There are three meds used for intestinal worms, and all three are available in the UK.

Flubendazole treats both flat worms (tape worms) and round worms (eg camallanus worms).
Flubendazole is in NT Labs Anti Fluke & Wormer and Maidenhead Aquatics own brand AquaCare Anti Fluke & Wormer (possibly the same product)
It is also in Kusuri Wormer Plus but this is a powder meant for large tanks and it is difficult to measure the small dose needed for small tanks.

Praziquantel treats flat worms and is in eSHa gdex

Levamisole treats round worms and is in eSHa ndx

Metronidazole treats intestinal protozoan infections but is not available in the UK without prescription.

We can't get antibiotics without prescription either. If you want to treat for possible secondary infections, I would try either eSHa 2000 or Myxazin by Waterlife.

Thanks for the info, I'll look at trying eSHa next if flubendazole doesn't seem to do the trick.

spleenharvester · May 22, 2021

Sad news, #3 has now died in isolation. This was 24 hours after starting praziquantel, possibly too late for it to do anything. Really stuck for what to do now, feels like I am going to lose everything.

spleenharvester · May 29, 2021

#4 and #5 now sick. I'm dosing with levamisole, praziquantel and flubendazole simultaneously now, because I and everyone else seem to be out of ideas and nothing else is stopping this

spleenharvester · Jun 4, 2021

For anyone stumbling across this in the future wondering how this ended - not good unfortunately. I'm down from 13 guppies to 2 little few month old babies, all killed by this disease. I'm probably just going to sell the tank now.

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