Please ID disease on guppy

[Johny]

We have a tequila sunrise male guppy that appears to have something wrong with the scales on his tail and adjacent body. his scales kind of look raised up, and it kind of looks like a fuzzy growth, except his coloring hasn't changed.

I can't give you tank parameters, because we don't have a test kit. I know we need one, but we can't afford one right now. We will be purchasing one hopefully at the end of the month.

Tank is a 20 gal high. We have had it since the middle of may, and we bought it already established (he was one of the fish that came with the tank) and the previous owners had it for 6 months to a year before us.

We have an UGF as well as a tetra whisper 20i filter.

Besides the sick fish, we have 3 other male guppies, 5 guppy fry, 6 glolight tetras and 5+ black kuhli loaches.

I do water changes every saturday, using a gravel vacuum. I vacuum 1/4-1/3 of the gravel (rotating what area I vacuum) and change about 40% of the water.

We haven't done anything new to the tank (i.e. decorations, substrate, etc.)

We feed aqueon tropical flakes, twice a day.

We have no experience with fish disease. Any help with what he has and what treatment options we have would be helpful. Just a heads up.... We really can't afford to go buy medications right now. It will be about 2 weeks at least before we could. (unless they are like $3 and I can scrounge up some change)

 

[Johny]

Oh, we first noticed it yesterday. His behavior hasn't changed. He eats just fine, and none of the other fish are showing any signs of it.

 

[Johny]

Update: So the fuzzy/ raised parts of his tail now look a bit more like blisters or cysts.

Any ideas anyone?

My wife has been researching and found that guppies are prone to cancerous cysts? Could that be it, or is it more like fin rot?

 

[Johny]

here are a couple more pics from today:

 

[Lifeoffroad]

Check this page out. Might help

http://www.carolinafishtalk.com/for...s/3-common-fish-disease-picture-included.html

It looks fungal to me. Furan 2 is what I use for fungal infections

 

[Vamptramp3405]

I just lost all my guppies and from the hours of research that I did the only thing that seem to fit was cotton fungus. There tails start to get tore up like fin rot but then the guppies lose their color and have no more fin left and die. I've tried melafix pimafix or however u spell it, I haven't lost any of my mollies or platties soo maybe that helped. Look up the cotton fungus on guppies and look at pictures. Google is where I found it. Fit to the T! Hope this helps

 

[Johny]

I will check that out. Only thing that doesn't fit from your description is the loss of color. Almost a week since our guppy started looking bad and he still has his color. But like I said I will double check, thanks for the suggestion.

 

[Johny]

Well I spoke too soon... I made that last reply before checking on him. He didn't make it. Thanks everyone for your help.

 

[Lifeoffroad]

Well I spoke too soon... I made that last reply before checking on him. He didn't make it. Thanks everyone for your help.

Sorry for your loss. His gills didn't look to good either. Was he eating? If not I would say internal parasites or gill flukes. The most common cotton like fungus is cotton mouth I believe and like the name it starts around the mouth. Don't get yourself down. Some fungus and parasites are impossible to treat and you don't want them to suffer.

 

[Johny]

He would eat a little, but not as good as usual. He always had a bit of red around his gills, that was just his coloring.