Wobbly Guppy?

[OldMan47]

Nice going Biokid.
I always judge my own success by how many fry I end up needing to care for.

 

[biokid101]

thats nice. i hope she hangs in there cause my other females died after givng birth so i hope she makes it... i actually want to be prepared for next time. but i have another female that i bought yesterday and shes a tequila sunrise guppy and she only has color on her tail with orange yellow and red. shes very big but i dont see a birthing tube or her being squared off. she is way bigger than all my other guppys. my juviniles(im gonna call them that now cause i have two batches and im going to get confused) r gonna be 4 weeks and they r big im going to put one of them in the adult tank to see if it survives.but i will make a close observation on one of them to see if it is healthy.

 

[biokid101]

omg she doesnt look so good she is at the top swimming and sometimes stay behind the plant. i hope she doesnt die but i think she is! is it because i dont put salt.

 

[OldMan47]

You have probably already said it in the past but what kind of water do you have in your tank Biokid? If it is soft water with a neutral pH, that may be part of the problem. I find that livebearers thrive in my hard water with a high pH. It is one of the reasons that I focus mostly on livebearers. In my water, they are very easy to rear as long as I do occasional water changes and gravel cleans.
With my heavy plantings, I go more in the Walstad NPT direction than many people and that includes less frequent water changes than other approaches tend to use. Even so my hard water in the tanks is always sweet and clean because of the cleaning the plants do for me. I am sitting looking at my red tailed goodeid tank, a 55 gallon, and it has water lettuce across the whole water surface with roots extending almost down to the substrate. That is what I consider a large plant population. The stem plants, Vallisneria and Anubias are struggling a bit because of the shade cast by the water lettuce even though the tank runs at 2 WPG.

 

[biokid101]

ohh i c, my water ph is around 7 is that good? i checked the water and i got ammonia:0 nitrate:0 is that good too? she is panting in the bottom corner of the tank. i know shes not gonna make it which sucks cause i wish i could do something...

 

[Harlequins]

Is this another pregnant female? she could possibly getting ready to drop...

 

[OldMan47]

Chances are that with a pH of around 7, your water is fairly soft. That would be great for things like angels, cories and tetras but not the best water for typical livebearers. If you are running a community tank, you are not faced with many choices, but if it is a livebearers only tank you could harden the water and increase the pH by putting a bit of crushed coral in the filter's flow path. It will tend to drive the hardness and pH higher and result in better livebearer health. The down side is it will be hard on many fish that people commonly like to have in their tanks. It is one of the reasons that I end up devoting tanks to single species of livebearers and keep my community tanks separate.

 

[biokid101]

harlequins this female that im talking about gave birth 2 days ago.and when i said my ph is around seven i checked it again and it was like 7.4 or 7.5 and how do i harden the water?

 

[OldMan47]

If you have only livebearers and similar fish, you can harden water by placing some crushed coral or crushed shell into the filter's flow path. It is a readily available form of calcium carbonate because it is what salt water people sometimes use as their substrate. The material slowly dissolves in your water and raises the hardness and pH in the process. If you go down that road, it is important to monitor your progress and adjust the amount of crushed coral and the amount of your regular water changes to get a consistent result. WD worked with another member here to write up the details of how to raise hardness and pH. There is a link to it in my signature area called pH Problems.

 

[biokid101]

sadly my female died today.yesterday my orange swordtail gave birth but she is in my 36 gal. its starting to frustrate me cause i havent been able to see them live for more then 3 days after they gave birth except my swordtails. and before she died she had a clear gravid spot and when she was dead her gravid spot was really dark. :'( my other female is getting ready to drop to. she is sqaured off but didnt show her birthing tube yet. but im scared for her. what kind of coral should i get?
i dont think its the ph cause my 36 gal and my 5 gal have the same ph and the livebearers in the 36 gal are all fine(except for the one that died yesterday).


1st batch guppy fry: 30 days old,tomorrow they will be one month!!
2nd batch guppy fry: 4 days old
swordtail fry: 13 days old

 

[OldMan47]

Crushed coral or crushed shell, either one is fine, is sold at the LFS as substrate for saltwater fish. It is obvious that it is bits of shell and coral if you examine it closely. Your pH is not bad at 7.5 but you should check with the local water authority about the water's hardness if you don't have a way to measure it. Changing water parameters is a chancy thing to do without adequate measurements.

 

[biokid101]

ok. my guppies r a month old and are showing a black color on their tails.

 

[OldMan47]

Not a giant surprise there Biokid. Guppies are rapid developing fish and will show a bit of a tint in their colors as soon as they start to develop. It can take another few months before you will have a good idea of their final color patterns though. At that age, the ones with a hint of color are the ones that will develop into males as they mature.

 

[biokid101]

ok thanks for that advice. i have a big 1 month old guppy fry about ______ long while the others are _____ long...is it a female..and it has like a clear spot where in a female a gravid spot is located....i think its a female.. i only see it sometimes cause it likes to hide...i wonder why its so big.

im afraid to put my one month old fry in with my adult guppies....i know they wont get eaten but they may get nipped and killed...then eaten piece by peice....brrr... i might wait till the middle of march.

 

[biokid101]

i just cleaned all the algea off the walls in the tank and i must say its much brighter in there... i wanna get some snails..what kind would u preffer for my 5 gal?

ooo and make sure they breed too lol...?