Charmaine

What does it mean when your guppys tail fins are closed and not flairing like they should be??

Blub

What do you mean by 'closed'? Do you have pics?

Charmaine

Sorry don't have pics. I have fancy guppys and usually their tail fins are spread wide open but now they run into a point. Kind of like a hand fan, instead of being open, they are closed.

Blub

It sounds like they are stressed, possibly with an illness. Are their pectoral fins clamped against the body?

Charmaine

Yes, they look like rockets.

Blub

I'd suspect some sort of disease. I'm not an expert on fish disease diagnosis, I seem to recall clamped fins being a symptom of ick.

Charmaine

But some of them have died and I don't see any of them with white spots on them. All they do is either hover on the top of the tank or they just lie on the bottom of the tank.
What should I do??

Blub

Test the water - it sounds like you have had a toxin spike, do a water change, daily water changes should help.

Charmaine

Can you give me more info on "Toxin Spike" please.

Blub

Like, a sudden outburst of ammonia or nitrite.

Charmaine

Oh ok. What causes that to happen??

Blub

If you have had something like a powercut that switched the filter off for a while (more than half an hour) some of you bacteria will die off and they cannot cope. Or, perhaps you forgot to turn the filter back on after maintainence (Looking back...) Test the water, lets find out if that's what cause it.

Charmaine

Can't test the water now cause I am at work but I have had no power cuts and my filter has been running non stop since the last time I cleaned it and that is a while back.

Blub

Hmm. It's probably stress related and that made them vunerable to the disease.

Charmaine

Thanks for your help. I will test the water when I get home and keep up with my daily water changes. What else should I do to fix this.

jdhef

Clamped fins are usually the sign of a sick fish. I don't know what illness they may have though. Is he eating? Is his stomach bulging?

Good Luck

sirdarksol

There are a number of possibilities here. Hatchet's question (what are the readings?) is going to be the first step in determining a problem.
As both Hatchet and Jdhef said, clamped fins (which is what we call it when fish close their fins up. It's the fishy equivalent of the fetal position) is a sign of pain that usually indicates illness. If there are a number of fish with clamped fins, it's a tank-wide problem. If it's just one, it may be limited to a single fish.

Charmaine

Well I checked my readings last night and everything is fine except for my PH which was 7.8. This morning when I went to check on them they had all died except for 4 of them which did not have clamped fins at all.

I also found some babys in the tank and they look to be about 3 days old and they have survived, can I move them to my baby tank, will it be safe for all my other babys??