Hey guys,
So I'm a little stumped on this one. Got a shipment of 4 new guppies (3 males and a very pregnant female) about 2 weeks ago. It was cold when they shipped, so I was a little worried, but I drip acclimated them, and then got them set up in my QT tank with no issues other than them looking a bit stressed for a couple days. QT is a bare bottom 4 gallon hex that's been running for a couple of months - double filtered, aerated, and heated to 78 F. Parameters before adding fish were 0 amm, 0 nitrite, 5 nitrate, ph 7.4.
I started off running purigen in the filter and just treating with Stressguard, Paraguard, AQ salt, and medicated food (seachem metroplex), figuring that would be the least stressful for them. Did that for the first week, but still lost one male who just didn't seem to bounce back from the stress - no symptoms, just never started eating and thriving. Nevertheless, I wondered if it was parasite related (based on the lack of appetite and lethargy), so to be safe I removed the purigen, did a partial water change, and did one course of kanaplex and metroplex (fed kanaplex, metroplex in the water column). The other 3 seemed fine, so I treated like this for 2 doses over 4 days, then did a partial change and went back to regular filtration and food. Continued testing every other day, and the water parameters remained constant.
A few days later, the female randomly has what looks like body fungus on one spot on her stomach. The fungus was big enough to protrude from her body, and produced white fuzzy looking strands. Like it would actually shed strands and little chunks of white cottony crap - it was gross. Still eating, swimming, seeming normal. I restarted my kanaplex, metroplex combo. Throughout the next 3 days, it waxed and waned between looking better and worse - every hour seemed different. One minute she'd have a huge clump of it on her, then the next minute that would shed off and it would look like it was almost gone. She developed a tiny bit of fin rot on her tail as well, but the fungus never seemed to go anywhere else. Yesterday she dropped like 30 fry, which I removed to a tank with no meds so they wouldn't be impacted by that. Afterwards I noticed a tiny pinhole in the side of her abdomen where the fungus was (though there seemed to be barely any left on her). Again thinking that looked like parasites, I gave her a paraguard dip to clean out that little wound while I did a water change/vacc and re-upped the meds in the water. Overall she looked a bit better, so I was optimistic.
This morning though, I found her dead, and the abdominal wound looked like the attached picture. What am I dealing with here? The males don't seem to be showing any symptoms at all, and I don't see any worms anywhere except the occasional detritus worm. Plus I feel like paraguard, paired with internal and external metroplex should have killed any parasites... Anyone have any insight?
So I'm a little stumped on this one. Got a shipment of 4 new guppies (3 males and a very pregnant female) about 2 weeks ago. It was cold when they shipped, so I was a little worried, but I drip acclimated them, and then got them set up in my QT tank with no issues other than them looking a bit stressed for a couple days. QT is a bare bottom 4 gallon hex that's been running for a couple of months - double filtered, aerated, and heated to 78 F. Parameters before adding fish were 0 amm, 0 nitrite, 5 nitrate, ph 7.4.
I started off running purigen in the filter and just treating with Stressguard, Paraguard, AQ salt, and medicated food (seachem metroplex), figuring that would be the least stressful for them. Did that for the first week, but still lost one male who just didn't seem to bounce back from the stress - no symptoms, just never started eating and thriving. Nevertheless, I wondered if it was parasite related (based on the lack of appetite and lethargy), so to be safe I removed the purigen, did a partial water change, and did one course of kanaplex and metroplex (fed kanaplex, metroplex in the water column). The other 3 seemed fine, so I treated like this for 2 doses over 4 days, then did a partial change and went back to regular filtration and food. Continued testing every other day, and the water parameters remained constant.
A few days later, the female randomly has what looks like body fungus on one spot on her stomach. The fungus was big enough to protrude from her body, and produced white fuzzy looking strands. Like it would actually shed strands and little chunks of white cottony crap - it was gross. Still eating, swimming, seeming normal. I restarted my kanaplex, metroplex combo. Throughout the next 3 days, it waxed and waned between looking better and worse - every hour seemed different. One minute she'd have a huge clump of it on her, then the next minute that would shed off and it would look like it was almost gone. She developed a tiny bit of fin rot on her tail as well, but the fungus never seemed to go anywhere else. Yesterday she dropped like 30 fry, which I removed to a tank with no meds so they wouldn't be impacted by that. Afterwards I noticed a tiny pinhole in the side of her abdomen where the fungus was (though there seemed to be barely any left on her). Again thinking that looked like parasites, I gave her a paraguard dip to clean out that little wound while I did a water change/vacc and re-upped the meds in the water. Overall she looked a bit better, so I was optimistic.
This morning though, I found her dead, and the abdominal wound looked like the attached picture. What am I dealing with here? The males don't seem to be showing any symptoms at all, and I don't see any worms anywhere except the occasional detritus worm. Plus I feel like paraguard, paired with internal and external metroplex should have killed any parasites... Anyone have any insight?
