fancy tail guppie problem! help please

[itbeme]

Hi all,
 This is my first time doing the chat thing, so please be patient. I have a problem i hope someone can help me with. I have a ten gallon tank with guppies, they're new to the tank, about a month, and they keep dying on me, I keep bringing my water to the store and they say it checks out ok. Meanwhile I brought back another dead fish today along with another alive and in a baggie I figured as having dropsey they told me that she's pregnant. I guess my main question is how do you tell the difference?     thanks, SS ???

 

[colesea]

Well, I'd hate to burst your bubble, but guppies are a type of fish that just, well, suck.

I work in a LFS and I have the same problems with my customers as well. Guppies look fine in the store, guppies go home, guppies dead the next day, water checks out fine. The best I can figure it is that guppies just don't handle stress very well. Not transport stress, not cycling stress, not overcrowding stress. They just die at the drop of a hat.

That and the fact that most guppies you see in LFS are imports from the far East. Those guppies tend to be overbred, inbred, and weakened in some other fashion that make them not handle stress very well. They're also more prone than any other fish I've ever kept to mouth fungus and bacterial infections.

So when you buy guppies, you're basically buying a 50/50 chance. You could be doing everything right, and still have a dead fish the next day. Or, your can buy the guppy that never dies. I've never seen it be any other way.

The best advice I could give you is that if you like guppies so much, give up on the LFS variety and find yourself some local breeders. They can be found at your local Aquarium Society meeting. At least, the chapter I belong too seem to be nothing but big "macho" men showing off their guppies *yawn*. They're a heck of a lot cheaper if bartered for too. Pairs were being acutioned off at $1 at my AS meeting.
~~Colesea

 

[ChazECJr]

On the bright side, if your female really is pregnant and is one of the unkillable ones, you'll soon have all the guppies you need...and more.

 

[Dinocine]

i keep guppies too, and had 2 gone to the big aquarium in the sky in the period of 3 months. i don't find guppies difficult to keep, just that they need very very clean water. my encounters were just after i stirred much of the substrate for twice while changing water, and each time 1 got dropsy and died few days after. i don't think it was just coincidence, and i checked it out with my big time local guppies breeder. he advised not to include substrate in guppy tanks in order to maintain best water condition possible, especially if keeping delicate types.

 

[Matt Nace]

Dinocine--stir the substrate? Do you vaccuum?


I agree that they do need good water. I never had a problem with guppys, unless the waterchanges were neglected. I then would notice health problems.

 

[WonderBoy]

man my GF and I live together and we have a small (100+gal) home made pond on our deck.  Its just a wood box with a liner and a bunch of plants.  We put in a few gold fish of the "fancy" verity and then some baby guppies to eat mosquito larva.  The little nymphs had several babies.  Over the winter we put them in the aquarium to keep them alive and sure enough they had babies again.  

Then my GF went to a lfs and bought several and with in a few weeks 1/2 or less are alive now. I cant figure it out I have been keeping a marine tank and know you cant over stock because of stress so maybe that’s it.

 

[itbeme]

Hi all,
  Thanks for so many responces! you've all been encouraging and helpful to a frustrating situation.
  (Does  'LFS' mean live fish store?)  
  Been talking to an employee at the store i bought the fish, seems to give me one of three conclusions after hearing how i manage my tank...1. Either the fish were sick to begin with and slowly got worse, or 2. Fish are stressed, from over crowding (9 in a 10gal tank), or simply because of the transfer from store to tank or 3. 'Old tank syndrome' ??? (of which i'm not too sure of , i'm no pro at this by any means but apparently it's when the nitrite is too high and reverts back to nitrate, fluxing in waves in short time periods??? (did i get that right ?)
  Anyway i should have earlier that said the cycle in the tank was running for a year with no hitch, i had 3 neons, 2 red eye tetras, and 3 pricilla tetras, and 2 (can't remember...) bottom feeders. all was fine until when i moved the tank,(on wheels) the heater went screwy and boiled em all,  :'(  ( fish soup anyone)
  so i'd like to think that i knew something about what i was doing... got alot to learn still!
  I do vacume, not sure what substrate means, or Dioncine either, and i found out the store buys the guppies locally from  breeders so they're suposedly hardy. humm!
  By the way the employee said for me to do a 1/3 water change to the tank this week and next, do you think that i should? well, did this weeks, will wait for a reply before the next one...
  Well i better scoot. Thanks again to all of you, wish us luck!
                                       Ciao for now, Stephanie

 

[Dinocine]

itbeme-substrate refers to sand of gravel put in the bottom of a tank. mrb-i did vacuumed the substrate and being the first few times doing that, i stirred up a great deal. i suspect much of the beneficial bacteria were removed(i vacuumed the whole length of the bottom instead of only half of the tank as advised in fish keeping books) and caused inefficient bio filtration(my tank was overstocked). These guppies may be hardy, but they are very prone to fin rot, so good water condition is still the essential part of keeping them.  

 

[kimmarie0462]

I have just set my tank up and was looking for imformation on my guppies. I found out that if you put salt in the tank it will help lessen the stress on your guppies. There are also a lot of other benifits to putting salt in your guppy tank. I'm in the process of the 10 day salt treatment because 3 out of the 8 guppies I bought got sick. After the first day of treatment with the salt they all seemed to be doing better. I'm hoping that this time I will have much better luck with guppies. Also, I was told at the pet store that I should change abut 20% of my tank each week. This varies depending on who you talk too.

 

[Bettaman shane]

Hmmm...... Well those little feeder guppy's are very tough....i find them actually hard to kill....I bread some feeder into the strain i have been working on and it seems to be helping there hardyness......i had 100% live on the 8 hour trip to my sisters house

heh hope to talk more
*celebratesmiley* Shane  *celebratesmiley*

 

[DannyDJ]

Stephanie, you asked about "LFS" and it means "Local Fish Store" (or Shop).  Sometimes you'll see "LPS" which means "Local Pet Store" (or Shop).    

 

[colesea]

Feeder "guppies" are sometimes mosquito fish fry, FYI. I haven't been able to kill mosquito fish either. I'm sure they'll breed with fancy guppies, but they're not guppies.
~~Colesea

 

[kimmarie0462]

I'm a little comfused. Isn't there such a thing as feeder guppies? And what are mosquito fish?

 

[colesea]

Feeder guppies are guppies bred to be a food source for other fish, and not for fancy tails or colors.

Mosquito fish are a killie that were once commonly released into mosquito trenches to eat mosquito larvae and prevent mosquito infestations from becomming very annoying to humans and lifestock. Mosquito trenches are more common in the swamy areas of the US south. I didn't know what a mosquito trench was either, until I nearly tripped over one in the Keys. They're just a ditch, about two inches wide, and lined with concrete. I don't know where they start or where they end, but it must be at some water source because they're usually filled with sluggishly moving water. Ideally they're suppose to attract resident mosquitos to lay their eggs in the thrench, and the population of fish in that trench are suppose to eat the larvae and eggs.  I don't know if it actually works or not, but if you're down in the Keys, a whole lot of their reservation and parkland are criss-crossed with these trenches that seem to come out of nowhere.
~~Colesea

 

[kimmarie0462]

Ok, I get what you were saying before about the feeder guppies and the mosquito fish. Sorry about that. Thank you for the information.