Male Guppy Refuses To Eat

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WarmLobster

Aquarium Advice Newbie
Joined
Jun 8, 2023
Messages
1
10 gallon tank
Heated to 80 F
Filtered
Water change every weekend (20 percent)
Tankmates: betta fish, two female guppies, and a mystery snail (including pest snails)

My male guppy has been fine, yet for the past two days he refuses to eat. He'll swim with the females when flakes are dropped in; but doesn't eat. Females and betta are eating fine, and it feels like a weird change.

I cant tell if he's sick, but I don't see any ich.

Is he sick? Every other fish is fine, I don't see any aggression towards him, and I've tried feeding him smaller pieces of flakes.
 

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Can you give some more details about the tank? How long has it been set up? How long have you had the fish? Has it never eaten or suddenly stopped eating?

Those test strips are going to be pretty inaccurate and dont cover ammonia. Do you have anything that tests for ammonia?

Guppies and bettas arent generally considered good tank mates. Even if you arent seeing aggression doesn't mean there isnt any. Can you isolate the guppy?
 
Hi and welcome to the forum :)

How long have you had the fish for?
How long has the tank been set up for?
How often and how do you clean the filter?

It's not ich (white spot). That looks like grains of salt sprinkled over the body and fins.

He doesn't look right and generally it is poor water quality, or an external bacterial or protozoan infection that causes problems to the fish. It doesn't appear to be bacterial but could be protozoan or water quality (ammonia). Clean the tank and add some salt.

Bigger water changes are also better than small ones.
If you do a 20% water change, you leave behind 80% of the bad stuff in the water.
If you do a 50% water change, you leave behind 50% of the bad stuff in the water.
If you do a 75% water change, you leave behind 25% of the bad stuff in the water.

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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 that might be needed 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 the media. Tip the bucket of dirty water on the garden/ lawn. Cleaning the filter means less gunk and cleaner water with fewer pathogens so any medication (if needed) will work more effectively on the fish.

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

Add some salt, (see directions below).

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SALT
You can add rock salt (often sold as aquarium salt), swimming pool salt, or any non iodised salt (sodium chloride) to the aquarium at the dose rate of 1 heaped tablespoon per 20 litres (5 gallons) of water. If there is no improvement after 48 hours you can double that dose rate so there is 2 heaped tablespoons of salt 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, 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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