Fish Updates

Here is a photo of one of the first batch of fry that my original female guppy (who recently passed away) and one of her sons reproduced, these fry are now 6 weeks old this week and in my opinion have been growing rapidly (they all basically look like this thus far) as they are about an inch in length now.

Here are the original female guppy's first offspring (to which the father is unknown and the mother is now deceased as mentioned before). These two males were the ones that reproduced this current batch of 6 week old fry and are the only 2 fully matured males I currently have. I don't plan on breeding these two again until the 6 week old female fry are mature. These two have also reproduced with there sisters in my other tank and those fry are around 3-4 weeks old now and seem a bit slow growing.

Male guppies at 7.5 months old

Some people have asked me how Mr.Moto my blue veil-tail betta is doing and he's doing just fine although I think he has been wanting to breed for some time now, but I do not plan to breed betta's due to there general temperment and the amount of space it will ultimately consume for me. Today I placed him back into his smaller Cubus tank while I clean out his Mini-Bow. As you can see his coloring has changed yet again. Mr. Moto's head area has turned mostly black in color and he has odd white lines that run vertically between the mouth to gill area, which I think may be a breeding identifer as well as the white area running under his belly. The horizontal stripes along his sides though are what I call his "stress stripes" which didn't start to appear until I moved him back into his Cubus (the tank change and move can cause that to happen obviously but they will go away when he feels more at ease). I also have never noticed the tiny black line of dots on his lower under-belly fin, perhaps that's also a breeding sign.

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Dropsy

This week as I checked on my female guppy tank I noticed my main fish mom (the one that started all the current guppies I have) had developed a case of dropsy. I don't think I've had a fish get dropsy since about 5yrs back when I had some zebra danio's. I treated the tank with Maracyn Two and Mardel CopperSafe and within a few hours the female had unfortunately passed away. All my other fish seem to be doing fine, I moved the fry into the male guppy tank after 24/hrs of treatment and left the other adult females in the treated tank which I will clean out this coming week.

What's Dropsy?

Dropsy is a bit difficult to diagnose but it is generally a bacterial infection which could be introduced through poor water quality (high in nitrates). It could also be kidney/heart failure (possibly due to too many water chemicals), excess fluid to the liver, or other possible causes. It could possibly be contagious.

Dropsy Characteristics?

Rapid Breathing, Protruding Scales, and Bloated Body. In early and latter stages of dropsy you may notice the fish going to the surface often for air, possible lack of appetite, or even spends most of its time at the top or bottom of the aquarium. There may also be a change in color (female guppies tend to turn a bit gray on the body).

Dropsy Treatment?
As dropsy is hard to diagnose it makes it difficult to treat. Moving the fish to a quarantine tank may make matters worse due to the stress it will cause on the ill fish. If the fish is already showing the bloated spiny appearance than chances of survival are probably slim. An aquarium salt bath may help to draw out the fluid in the fish. Some medications that may help are penicillin, tetracycline, and nalidixic acid. Water changes and clean water are a must to help prevent fish from getting dropsy.

*These remedies are only what I've researched on the Internet thus far and may/may not work.