bpsmicro

We've been nursing one sick Guppy with what I suspect is a combination of fin rot and perhaps stress due to earlier high ammonia levels. Like many new tank owners, we made the newbie mistakes of plunking in the fish before cycling the tank, and waiting a long time before getting the master test kit. In the past two weeks, we've now been doing daily tests, keeping a log, and doing near-daily 20%'ish changes. Overall, the tank is just past the 4-week mark since starting.

It's a 15g tank, currently housing two Guppies and seven Neon Tetras.

First, the Guppy. It's pale, sluggish, and somewhat translucent in color, and the tail was quite ragged early on. But no other signs of parasites or inflammation. It'd hang out near the top, but wasn't "gasping" or anything. It did eat what looked to be a normal amount. The other Guppy was hassling it, so we separated it into a breeding chamber (one of the kinds with a "frame" and fine netting for maximum water circulation), with a small fake plant for "decoration". We also started daily Melafix treatments (and removed the carbon chips out of the filter).
We did see some obvious improvement 24 hours after the first Melafix treatment. There's been some obvious tail growth, and a slight improvement in color. It's still sluggish and mostly hung out at the top. It's now been 5 days of daily Melafix, with water changes.
Today, it's mostly lying on the bottom of the chamber, currently hiding behind its plant. It'll move around if we "chase" it. But I'm betting this is a bad sign that we've failed. :-(

Now, our daily chemical tests for the past 10'ish days have been quite stable. pH has been solid at 8.0 (our water is very hard). Ammonia stable at 0.6 or slightly above (I'm going to say <1.0). Nitrites now at <0.1 (slightest hint of tint to the color). Nitrates (we started testing that late, so only 5 days of data) at or under 5.0. Water is quite clear.
We're doing AmmoLock treatments every second day, and about 20% water changes every one to two days.

At this point, as far as the chemistry goes, since the other fish seem to be doing fine, should I continue to monitor/change and just see if our cycle (which I'm presuming hasn't completed yet) finally kicks into gear, or should I be taking some sort of overt action to kick-start it a bit? Assuming the sick Guppy lasts through today, would any of the typical kick-starting mechanisms put it under even more stress?

angelfish220

Where did you get your fish? If it was scraggly looking when you got it I would never get anything there again. Good call on seperating the fish livebarers tend to create a pecking order and if you onlyhave 2 the bigger will always pick on the smaller. What is your temperature? tropical fish tend to be sluggish when the water is to cold. I'm pretty sure that there should be NO ammonia or nitrites at all, course I'm having problems with that so who knows. try to up your daily change and see how that works. I havent heard of the med your using but around here they recomend Prime for stress and uped immune system.

bpsmicro

All the fish were healthy looking on arrival, and the sick one didn't start looking sick until after the first week. Mind you, it may have been a slow downward spiral that we didn't notice right away. Temperature is kept at 76-78F.

Melafix seems to be fairly well known, and is best described as more of a "naturopathic" remedy of "all natural" ingredients. I've heard good things about it as a less intense initial treatment over the hard-core meds. The fact we saw some immediate improvement was a good sign, but it's possible it was too far gone when we started.

COBettaCouple

The ammolock treatments could be what's got your cycle stalled. I would recommend stopping those and using Prime as your water conditioner. Prime will help protect the fish from the ammonia, nitrites and nitrates. The water changes routine that you're doing is good and I'd keep doing that.

angelfish220 is right about the pecking order with guppies. Do you have a pic of the sick guppy to post? Is it a male or female?

bpsmicro

Okay, I'll look into Prime next time I'm near the LFS. I was actually wondering about that. I don't remember a lot of my high school chemistry, but it wasn't abundantly clear to me exactly how something like AmmoLock worked, since it claimed not to "remove" the ammonia.

The Guppy demised this afternoon. I'd figured (hoped) that if it survived overnight there was still some hope, but the end came fairly quickly. We're getting pretty good at recognizing about-to-die fish. The next trick is to try to prevent it. Luckily, all the remaining ones seem pretty healthy. We won't add any more until we get the chemistry numbers out of control.