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.

Click to Enlarge

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.

Tail Split Remedy



A ginkgo leaf looks similar to a tail split



After moving my male guppies back into there 10gal aquarium last week I noticed one of my males had a tail split straight down the middle of his tail to the base. Tail splits can occur for many different reasons such as...water parameter changes, fighting, or even getting snagged on aquarium decor. After waiting about 2 days to see if his tail was going to mend itself, it really didn't seem to be so I took a shot at trying to correct the issue.

I decided to pour in a bit of PimaFix (originally I was going to try Melafix but I couldn't locate my bottle of it) into my 10gal aquarium. By the next day I shocked to see that his tail was halfway repaired! So I continued putting in 1-2 capfuls of PimaFix into the aquarium every day (I actually didn't remove the carbon from my filtration either) and in under a week, his tail split was basically gone. Click here to see how it helped my gold barbs in the past as well.

What's PimaFix?
PimaFix's active ingredient is Pimenta Racemosa (1.0% in the API brand I used) which is a bay rum oil that comes from the West Indian bay tree (or bay rum tree) which is part of the myrtle tree family. Common remedy uses for Pimenta Racemosa are for colds, flu's, digestion and insect repellent. PimaFix claims to rapidly treat internal and external fungal infections on fish as it's an anti-fungal product. It also claims to help cottony growth and reddening on fins and body.

Guppy Updates

Today my first guppy (the original store bought pregnant guppy that started this strain) gave birth to her sons fry (yes, that sounds weird but true). I now have at least 20+ new fry and I believe her daughters are also pregnant from there brothers so, I'm sure I'll end up with more fry at some point in the near future. I am hoping that with my new fry I will be able to perfect the strain a bit however, there are many other factors to consider but I'd rather not make things too complicated. In the mean time, I have 3 months before the new fry has mature males to breed (from my past experience it usually takes the females twice as long to fully mature for breeding) and I have put the mature males into a separate tank from the females and new fry as I don't want them to breed together again. Keep in mind that a female guppy can continue giving birth months after she has dropped one batch of fry without having mated again (this additional batch has always been a low number of new fry for me though as it's generally just one fry born but I'm sure it could vary).

How to Remove Nitrite

Nitrite NO2 Ion

After having cleaned out my entire 10gal aquarium (as you may have seen from my previous posts) and replacing all the gravel substrate I didn't check my water quality since I had ran out of test strips and had added my male guppies to the tank within 24hrs I believe (obviously the tank needed to cycle). Well, that resulted in losing one of my male guppies after a few days (the reason why my guppies weren't being active in the first place) and luckily I was able to move my 2 remaining male guppies back into there old aquarium with the females and they made a speedy full recovery in 1-3days.

So now that I have test strips I realized, yes, I did have a nitrite issue (no ammonia though in case you were wondering). The only time I ever have a nitrite issue is when I replace the substrate. Generally I'd clean the entire tank out again (rinsing all the decor and such as well) and it would rid me of my nitrite issue (which sounds weird but it has worked for me in the past). So I decided I didn't want to go through the headache of cleaning my tank out again and wanted to find a product that could rid my tank of nitrite (as my nitrite level ranged from 0.5 - 3.0).

I was extremely skeptical I'd even find a product that could actually eliminate nitrite, especially having really hard well-water, which is generally pretty stubborn to alter. So, I went into PetSmart having no luck finding what I had initially been looking for and then I finally found ONE product in the whole store that day (which happened to be a bit pricey as well), it being my only option without having to go on a major product hunt I purchased a small bottle of... Tetra SafeStart.

I got home, followed the directions... removed the carbon filter, shook the bottle of Tetra SafeStart and poured in 1/3 of the bottle into my 10gal tank. Less then 10hrs later I tested the water and...NO nitrite whatsoever! It's seriously a miracle product which I can now recommend to you if you're battling nitrite. This product also claims to remove ammonia although, I had no ammonia so I'm not sure if it will combat that or not.

*Update* It has been months now since using Tetra SafeStart and I have not had a nitrite issue since I first began using this product. I know how some products can seem to work for a very short time (if at all) but that was not an issue when I used this. Or it is possible this product worked long enough for my tank to catch up in the cycling process before this product could have possibly ever worn off. So, I still really recommend trying this if you're having similar issues as I did because it worked perfectly for me.

Rain Water pH

According to Wikipedia the pH in rain water can vary depending on your location. Since it has been pouring rain here recently (around the DC area) I decided to make the best of it by capturing some falling rain drops in a cup and then testing it using the Tetra 6-in-1 EasyStrips.

My Results...

Nitrate = 0 Safe
Nitrite = 0 Safe
Hardness/GH = 0 Very Soft
Chlorine = 0 Safe
Alkalinity/KH = 0 Low
pH = 6.2 Acidic