Welcome to GuppyLog.com
New to Guppylog?
Immediate Help


Conversions and Calculator
Conversions and Tank volume calculator


Add yourself to our guppylog map
Guppylog Members


* Change as much water as often as you can! *
Inkmaker
Front Page · Everything · News · Ask Guppylog · Diaries
Is she having babies or dying...I need HELP!!!

Behavior
By guppylover427
from the guppylover427 department, Section Diaries
Posted on Wed Aug 29, 2007 at 01:02:46 PM PST
Tags: (all tags)
I went in to check on my guppies when I saw Peaches sitting on the bottom of the tank! This isn't like her at all!



She sits on the bottom of the tank and then goes to the surface. Peaches goes to the surface regulary hoping to find scraps because she has such an appetite, but when she goes to the bottom she is either chasing a piece of food or is trying to pick scraps off the gravel. But Peaches is like a 3 year-old, she is full of energy. So to see her sitting on the bottom, sitting up-right, and kind-of acting slugish, scares me. When she is sitting near the bottom, her breathing is fine but her fins instead of staying straight, falls down sort-of making an arch shape. Please help!!
< Guppies near the surface | Female acting odd question >
Menu

· create account

· F.A.Q. For Newbies!

· Immediate Help For Newbies!

· search


Web www.guppylog.com

· Scoop Info

· Our Tanks

Login
Make a new account
Username:
Password:

Related Links
· guppylover427's Diary

Display: Sort:
Is she having babies or dying...I need HELP!!! | 4 comments (3 topical, 1 editorial, 0 hidden)
She could be very close to dropping. (none / 0) (#1)
by unclescott on Tue Dec 26, 2006 at 09:31:10 PM PST

Or her immobility could be a water quality issue. It might especially be a matter of available oxygen and/or nitrogen/nitrate poisoning.

What is the tank's temperature? What has been the pattern of partial water changes? How often and how much are you changing?

(While figuring this out, if you have some treated water which is the same temperature as the tank, please do a 25% partial water change. Vacuum obvious dirt off ofthe tank bottom. If the water is seasoned, so much the better.)

Iss there any uneaten food rotting in the tank, That adds huge amounts of nitrogen based waste materials and sucks all sorts of oxygen out of the tank. Are you doing a little gravel vacuuming every week or so? You probably woulsn't do the whole tank, but over a month you probably would get the bottom on a weekly installment basis.

How long has the aquarium been set up? By week 6 or 8 were your tests for ammonia and nitrite at zero? Were nitrates below 40 PPM or better, below 20 PPM?

If you have an air stone only on your aquarium, can you turn it up a little, without sweeping the fish around the tank?

If you have a power or box filter, is the filter box full of gunk? Can you lightly rinse most of that out, while leaving the filter floss gray? (That way all of the beneficial bacteria is not washed out.)

If you have some activated carbon, you might rinse some out and put it into a bag and in the filter box for the emergency. Any resin type of thing which absorbs ammonia will be expensive, but may be useful in the emergency.

Oh! How old is peaches?

Please do what you can here and then, when convenient, answer what you can.

Thanks and good luck!



Re: She could be very close to dropping. (none / 0) (#3)
by guppylover427 on Tue Dec 26, 2006 at 09:47:56 PM PST

Thanks for the info. I changed the water just today and she looks very happy. Now she's hanging out with her guppy friends,but she still seems restless. Shadow,an all black male guppy, picks at her gravid spot at least before she notices him from behind and heads in the oppisite direction. But, she isn't completely herself. Her great appetite has reduced and she'll suddenly go crazy. By swimming all around the bowl like a maniac. At times she stills go to the bottom but no longer in a pathetic way. She seems a bit too active for a regular female though. If she ends up having fry [which i'm starting to wonder if she might] that'll be great. Oh, and she is about 3 months old. Thanks for the answers,you've saved little Peaches.
What? Were you expecting something funny?
[ Parent ]


"you've saved little Peaches." :) Nope, (none / 0) (#4)
by unclescott on Wed Dec 27, 2006 at 01:35:14 AM PST

you did. But it is nice to be a small help.

"She'll suddenly go crazy" worries me a little. If you take a gander at acidosis and alkalosis in Immediate Help for the first one and maybe Google Guppylog for the second one, you may see why.

Different fish have different comfortable ranges in pH. As a good general rule it doesn't pay to mess with them. But if the water gets too acid for a particular specues they get what is called "crazy man's disease" though it is really crazy fish's disease and they race around the tank, banging into things and even harming themselves. If the water gets too alkaline for the fish, much the same happens.

It is sort of like their wiring gets all corroded and shorts out (he said, unscientifically). Since many water sources (in the US anyway) are buffered by water departments to be in the upper 7s of pH (which is also comfortable for guppies), simply doing more water changes or (and I know I flog this too much) walking up the percentages of weekly/ biweekly water changes from 25% to 30% to 35% & 40% and 45% is beneficial. One the one hand we are getting rid of some of the fish wastes (healthy in its own right). Also those fish wastes, when breaking down biologically cause the water to swing in an acid direction. The other hand is that the water changes add buffers which hold the pH up. (The water people like that because then the old lead pipes don't dissolve, mess people up and create interesting law suites.)

So while urging water changes sound hopelessly simplistic, it does remove harmful things and adds useful and beneficial things. A forest pond may gradually exchange 90% of it's water with the water table, every day. So too, streams  especially draw a lot of their water from the water table and weather and thus are also profoundly changing the water, all of the time.

So what we are doing in changing water in aquariums is very natural. We just don't do nearly as much of it as mother nature. :)

[ Parent ]



Is she having babies or dying...I need HELP!!! | 4 comments (3 topical, 1 editorial, 0 hidden)
Display: Sort:

SourceForge Logo Powered by Scoop
Subscribe to our news feed
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective companies. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 2002 and beyond The Management

create account | faq | search