Psychlist1972

My wife inherited my old goldfish tank once I moved the goldies to the 55g.

Tank is kept at room temp, which is around 75. It's an overfiltered 20g, running a 55g aquion powerfilter and an airstone. She's using fake plants as she doesn't want to deal with the maintenance of live plants.

The tank was already cycled; kept the old media and substrate, but not decorations. Before turning it over, I stirred it up a bit, gave it a brief vac, and let everything settle with the filter running. API test and showed zero on everything (nitrate was maybe 5, but it was low).

The next day, my wife got 6 guppies, 3 of each sex as I recall, as well as two mystery snails. They were in the tank when I got home. They weren't acclimated to the water, but they were to the temperature (bag float).

A few days later, she had a two of them die. I checked the water, and it looked good. However, I did a 25% water change just in case, and used Prime as the conditioner. She brought them back to the store along with a water sample. They did a test and said the ammonia was a bit high, but within tolerance (I double checked with the API kit and think the kid was wrong) and the rest of the params were good.

In the mean time, she picked up 3 rasboras and added them to the tank, as well as a couple ghost shrimp. Both types are doing well so far.

She lost another guppy a couple days after that.

The water is the same water I use in my goldfish and tropical tanks. pH is 7.6 or so. There's no sign of ICH. However, there's a guppy in there now who is only swimming with one fin; the other fin is hanging there looking kind of useless.

Any idea what is going on? I'm thinking the fish were diseased at the store, or maybe it was the stress of the move? I'm at a loss, and my wife is a bit bummed because she liked the tanks I was keeping and wanted one herself (I'm doing maintenance, she picks the contents)

Pete

Lucy

I'm really sorry about your guppies.
I had been advised that a lot of the guppies that stores stock are just not that hardy from over breeding etc.
However, with live bearers like guppies you should have a ration of 1 male to 3 female otherwise the females can get harassed by the males possibly causing injury or death.

Psychlist1972

We lost almost the entire first set of guppies.

My wife then went to a reputable fish store who said they get them locally.

And several of those have died. On the males, the tails fell off before they went. The females we've found in a few places. Usually one per night.

Water params are fine. Temperature is fine. The rasboras in the tank are fine. The two snails and three ghost shrimp are also fine. I'm doing regular water changes. We ditched the plastic plants and I bought a T5ho and some real plants since we thought maybe the plastic plants were wrecking the tails, or were otherwise just not hospitable to the guppies.

We're at a loss here. It's terrible that the guppies keep dying. My wife really wanted some fancy guppies, and this was her first aquarium. She's ready to throw in the towel

We have two males and two females left out of about 10 total between the two stocks.

I didn't do a slow drip bucket acclimation with the guppies (just a temperature and quick bucket acclimation) . Are they that sensitive and I'd need to do the full approach?

We probably won't get any more until I get get to the bottom of thise. I'd hate to see my wife give up

Pete

ray_sj

Sorry to hear about your guppy problems. It sounds like you're doing everything correctly. As Lucy said, most pet store guppies are weak due to over-breeding. They might have been stressed or sick at the store as well.

The plastic plants should not be a problem, although I would stay away from ones that have sharp points or edges that might catch on their tails. Since you got them locally, I would think that the water chemistry would be similar, and a drip acclimation wouldn't be needed.

I had the same experience as you when I started with guppies last year. I gave up on pet store guppies and ended up getting some guppies from Aquabid, and raising the resulting fry. I've had very good luck with them. They're hardy, much more vibrant, and healthy. You could also try getting a pregnant female from the pet store and raising the fry. This would at least help you avoid all the stresses from shipping. But it won't help if they're weak genetically.

I hope you try again and get some good guppy stock. I love my guppy tank! They're so colorful and active. If you keep males together with females though, you'll soon have more guppies than you know what to do with!

redlessi

I have just had a similar experience with guppies from petco. I am now on my 3rd batch with only 1 surviving from the initial 6. Initially I bought 6, 2 males 4 females and 4 died, replaced those 4, and replaced those 4. Each batch died the same way. They started swimming funny and one died per day. All of my parameters were fine. I am just guessing a couple of bad batches but I fell in love with these fish so I kept trying.

Now I have 1 male and 4 females and monday I saw 3-4 babies in the tank on monday. The mom still looks pregnant so hopefully there will be more.

Good Luck!!!

mare2009

Im sorry to hear of the hardships that you all are having with your guppies. I have read that the guppies are not very hardy as their popularity would suggest. (my grandaughter lost all of hers recently purchased from petco.) So I researched guppies. Not only do they need the same water temperature, they also need the same Ph of the water. What I would do is acclimate them for a whole day with a mixture of the water from your tank and the water they came in from the store. And after they seem to adjust, release them into the tank minus the water you have been keeping them in. It sounds simple, but guppies are very sensitive, extremely sensitive. good luck...

Psychlist1972

@mare2009

Thanks for the advice.

Today I went to a different LFS (we have three really good ones within an hour drive, lucky!). I went there mainly for plants, but I decided to get my wife a few more guppies to try one last time.

I bucket acclimated them when I brought them home. Not a day, though, just about an hour - the time it took to have about 4x tank water vs. bag water dripped into the bucket. I had previously compared the pH in case that was a problem. The results looked like they came from the same water sample; you can't distinguish between the two vials.

Now, the tank here is definitely warmer. I'm going to need to put a fan on it or something to blow the hot air from the light away. It's within their range, but hovers around 79 due to the temperature outside, and the lighting on that tank.

If any of the new ones (one male and three female) are found dead in the am, that's it for guppies. It's cruel to keep doing it, plus it's depressing to my wife. We'll move on to something else; like the rasboras that are doing so well in that tank.

Pete

Nick G

Hi Pete. The main problem with Guppies nowadays is simply massive in-breeding which has created a very weak strain of Guppy with low immunities and high sensitivity to changes in water temp and quality. I breed Guppies on a relatively small scale, 6 Breeding Males to around 20 females, and it took me months to source high quality fish that were complety un-related. However having managed this, I have a near 100% survival rate with the fry, and have produced several very hardy, colour strains. I would advise seeing if you can source some Guppies from a private breeder if possible as these will more than likely be far hardier and better quality than those bought from a pet store.

whisper

About two months ago I had a bout of something in my tank and lost almost my whole group of guppies. About 40. I was just sick since I had raised all form fry. Still don't know what it was that went through them. One day they looked healthy the next day they all started dieing. It's like a guessing games sometimes.