Red Spots on Guppy

[mistymists]

So I have this red tailed guppy (Female). Yesterday she was fine, today she's barely swimming, mostly just staying in place, not eating, and has these little red spots all over her body that I never noticed before. I'll try to get a picture posted, but my camera isn't that good.

This is the best photo I could get. THe red is a lot darker than her own color and on one side it seems to be between the scales.

[mewickham]

The picture isn't clear enough to see much. It could be normal coloration, but I don't recall seeing female guppies with much in the way of red on the sides.

Fancy guppies, especially the ones brought in from Asian farms, are notorious for developing infections. The worst is Tetrahymena, a protozoan that is highly resistant to treatment. You can try the usual formalin/malachite green medications for protozoans, but keep your fingers crossed. They rarely work on Tetrahymena. Keeping two teaspoons of salt per gallon may help, but I've seen full seawater strength salt not cure fancy guppies. I can't recall if we tried metronidazole. Maybe it would be a better choice.

In any case, red spots could be almost anything-- protozoans, bacterial infection, flukes, and perhaps even viral infections. So you might want to try a good antibiotic, such as triple sulfa, kanamycin, or one of the furanoids (any with "fur" in the active ingredient, such as nifurpurinol or nitrafurazone). A fluke treatment might be in order.

This is one of those situations where a skin scrape placed under the microscope would be the ideal first course of action.

[mistymists]

Yeah, My camera's stink when it comes to trying to take close-ups of small things. Poor fish still won't eat and now she keeps swimming in a circle around the surface edge of the bowl. Oh and she won't let me take a good look at her anymore. All my other females have been acting normal since I pulled her, they're both eating and swimming like nothing was happening. I really can't come up with an explaination for their weird behavior.

Not really sure what I'm gonna try. I don't have access to any microscopes, so that makes diagnosis impossible, and I really don't have the money to be spending on fish medicines if they're not going to work. So I may just have to watch and wait for a more difinative symptom.

[mewickham]

If nothing else, move her to a separate container and add salt. Use a minimum of two teaspoons per gallon. I'd probably try four tsp/gal. It won't hurt the fish and might help. The Asian guppy farmers raise fancy guppies in nearly seawater strength salt (~24 tsp/gal!).

[mistymists]

Can I use table salt or do I need to buy special salt for that?

[mewickham]

Table salt is fine. Many of the old books insist that you use aquarium salt, sea salt, or uniodized table salt. But even iodized table salt is safe-- and perhaps helpful-- in the low levels we are talking about.

[mistymists]

She died

[Jackielee]

Sorry, that is the sad part about fish keeping, fish do die. I never like to see even after over 40 years of keeping fish.