Is this fungus on Guppies?

MegaMunch

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Hey, Worried about some guppies in my tank that were recently introduced and some now have quite large white marks on them. They are in the tank with a pair of platties. They have all become very shy including the platties and they are not that enthusiastic about eating, although they are eating still. The platties have no marks on them but behaviour has changed.

Kind of panicked and I went ahead and used anti fungal treatment today during a water change. Other tank mates inclued Khulie loaches, Ottos and loads of red cherry shrimp and java fern that all seem fine.

Found a fry with white tail which i tried to picture. The picture of the blue tailed female makes it appear like she has spots on her tail fin. Her tail actually looks more like its degrading and the camera makes it appear like spots for some reason.

Any info on what this could be would be appreciated, Thanks!
 

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Last edited:
Hi and welcome to the forum :)

The guppies have a bacterial infection that will probably kill them all unless you can get something to treat it with.

Unfortunately in the UK, anti-biotics are only obtainable through a vet and that will cost more money than the fish are worth. If you can find some medication that treats bacteria, you might be able to stop it. You can also add some salt to try and slow or stop it spreading.


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WHAT TO DO NOW.

Work out the volume of water in the tank.
Measure length x width x height in cm
Divide by 1000
= volume in litres

When you measure the height, measure from the top of the gravel to the top of the water level.

If you have big rocks or wood in the tank, remove these when measuring the height so you get a more accurate water volume.

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Wipe the inside of the glass down with a clean fish sponge. This removes the biofilm on the glass and the biofilm will contain lots of harmful bacteria, fungus, protozoans and various other microscopic life forms.

Do a 75% water change and gravel clean the substrate. The water change and gravel cleaning will reduce the number of disease organisms in the water and provide a cleaner environment for the fish to recover in. It also removes a lot of the gunk and this means any medication can work on treating the fish instead of being wasted killing the pathogens in the gunk.
Make sure any new water is free of chlorine/ chloramine before it is added to the tank.

Clean the filter if it hasn't been done in the last 2 weeks. However, if the filter is less than 6 weeks old, do not clean it. Wash the filter materials/ media in a bucket of tank water and re-use them. Tip the bucket of dirty water on the garden/ lawn. Cleaning the filter means less gunk and cleaner water with fewer pathogens.

Increase surface turbulence/ aeration to maximise the dissolved oxygen in the water.

Remove carbon from the filter if you use chemical medications otherwise the carbon will remove the medication. You don't have to remove carbon if you only use salt.

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SALT

You can add rock salt (often sold as aquarium 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, Bettas & 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 (1-2 heaped tablespoons per 20 litres) will not affect fish, 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.

When you first add salt, add the salt to a small bucket of tank water and dissolve the salt. Then slowly pour the salt water into the tank near the filter outlet. Add the salt over a couple of minutes.
 

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