gerr

[bleeding_sarcasm]

so, i had this tank. and.. it wasnt being particularly usefull. it had some interested fish, but... i wanted more. so then i got this great idea. to get an axolytl. and since i hear guppys are prolific breeders, i took all my cool fish back to the store [red tailed black sharks, puffers, dwarf cichlids, badis badis, mollys] i got totally ripped off on credit. and picked up a handfull of guppies. which have... mostly died. a few days later, i went to another store, and bought a couple more males, and all of their females. [who keeps 20,000 males and 7 females? this is just not right] the fish were showing signs of tail rot. so im medicating the tank, and now they come down with something completely different. i currently keep an assortment of fish, all of them there to eat algae, except for the guppies [plus a handful of baby mollys]. the disease looks like... a swollen/whitish midsection, and the scales look like theyre comming up/rough. and... any suggestions on making these things hump/breed like crazy, that would be great. since... i dont know much about them. and had this misconception they would be easy.

[Adrya]

well that sucks, sorry to hear about that.

..... the scales sticking out sounds like Dropsy which is a bacterial infection that infects the fish from the inside. And once they get to that point of the scales sticking out, it won't be much longer for them to live.

I had this problem with my goldfish in my pond when I introduced new goldfish without treating the pond... I lost a lot of favorites but the disease eventually stopped on its own by the time I found out what the problem was. But the symptoms you're describing seems exactly like what my problem was... the fish's bellies would bloat in the midsection and the scales would stick out.

You may try to find Melafix which is for ponds but I figure you can use it for aquariums as well... there's other medications out there that can treat this bacterial infection, so you may have to look around.

I'm not an expert but that's what I guess the problem with your fish may be.

[Lfsabch]

Originally Posted by Adrya_Webb

well that sucks, sorry to hear about that.
..... the scales sticking out sounds like Dropsy which is a bacterial infection that infects the fish from the inside. And once they get to that point of the scales sticking out, it won't be much longer for them to live.

i had a woman bring a platy in the other day thinking it was pregnant i dunno how she misinterpreted it, the platy was so swollen it no joke, had a belly the size of a marble, and i dont mean the small marbles i mean the midsized ones, its back was all bent up and stuff to compensate for the added body shape, and the scales?skin was so stretched that its belly was almost transparent.

kicker was it was still swimming around and eating,

[tmfleo1]

well something I learned years ago from a tropical fish store that I did all my business at adding aprox 1 teaspoon of aquarium salt to 10 gallons of water to the water help prevent ick , fin rot , fungus ,dropsy and many others


Breeding guppies the temp should be around 80 degrees feed them live food brine shrimp , tubifex worms , occasional egg yolk from a hard boiled egg mashed , keep plenty of live bushy plants for hiding places the adults will eat the babys so you need to set up something to keep them separated the baby guppies will need baby live brine shrimp and the mashed egg yolk .

If you have any more question let me know good luck

[bleeding_sarcasm]

ive had my first few pop up. found another dead fish today, and i have a bunch of live plants. and ive been treating with maracyn which is an antibiotic, i hate live food. i cant stand dealing with it. nothing like getting a 2 oz of tube effects, forgetting its in a drawer for a week or 2, then having the smell of rotting dead permeate everything in the room. ive gone hunting for animals because i thought a gecko died it was so bad, and that has happened a few times. were like... not near fish stores either, so its better just to stick with the food we have.