Hey guys,

ive got a question,

about 1 week ago my cheap heater went on a spaz and went up to 31deg , was probably at that temp for about 8 hours or so before i noticed and corrected it with a new heater.

The heater was set to its normal temp of 25 but the water felt more like a spa and my digital thermo said it was 31.3 deg of the top of my head.

I imidiatly replaced the heater with a new one, and did 2 water changes over the next few hours to help bring the temp down.

Since then i have been loosing 5-10 guppies a day. Each time i look at the tank another one or two are floating at the top in the weed or down in one of the plants.

Water paramters are all fine. 0 nitrates, nitrites, ammonia and ph is at 6.8.

Never lost a fish for 4 months untill this happened.

Can anyone tell me, have i cooked them? and is it normal that it takes a week or so for them to die?

Thanks guys.

I would think that cooking them would cause organ failure that could take a little while to kill them.

JMO

It is probably the water changes that caused most of the problem. It is rapid changes in temperature, pH and hardness that causes problems with fish. They can often tolerate a lot if the changes are gradual.

water changes wouldnt have been a shock, they wernt ic cold changes, they were room temp, nothing like i would not normally do

its about day 8 or 9 , the numbers are getting bigger, lost 6 yesterday and 8 today. Fish have no spots or markings, looks to be internal organ type of issue.

It is shock

the high heat may also have contributed to a lack of oxygen in the tank

which in turn may have caused some die off in gill membrane

there are many variables that will have come into play

but shock to the fishes system will be the biggest

you will just have to wait it out

one consolation could be what is left may be hardy

i guess we all make mistakes got to learn some how. so if i have this issue again, dont do a water change?

Either call it selective breeding or experience, both we learn from.

i guess we all make mistakes got to learn some how. so if i have this issue again, dont do a water change?

just let it cool naturally or do small changes

then do water changes once at right temp

once fish have gone through an extreme of water parameters adjustments need to be slow to avoid adding further stress

you will always lose some

as alan said, natural selection takes over

it sucks so bad, i was doing well, no dead fish since i set up the tank 4 months ago, had about 60 guppies in the 300L tank. Just wish i knew what to do.

What you do is learn from it. We have all learned the hard way at some time.

yeh, i understand, agree with you guys fully.

Just wish i knew when they gonna stop dying hehe so i can organise new ones.

Look at them at night in the dark with a torch. If they don't have spots that look like salt (whitespot) or pepper (velvet) they probably are not infectious. Sometimes stress can bring these diseases out. If they are clear it should be OK to add more fish.

ive got the light of, tried looking at the 12 or so that are left. most of them look normal, one or two look like there fins have started to go white and maybe rot? i had to also move my guppies to a different tank during all this. it sounds like iv shocked the life out of them all :( :oops: :oops: &c:ry &c:ry &c:ry

Would moving them to a new tank (presumably) with different water chemistry not shock them even more?

what happened is, i have 2 tanks

a 300L is downstairs

a 200L is upstairs

i had 50 guppies in my 300 L, the heater went on a spaz, i did two water changes ...story is on prev page,

my upstairs tank is my original tank, has been fully cycled for 6 months, had some neons and bristle noses in it with my siamese fighter,

i had all my chichlids coming so i had to put them in the 300L and the guppies into the 200L and got rid of all the fish that were all ready in the 200L.

at the time of the swap, only about 5 had died, i could only believe it was because of the heater issue,

i had no idea i was about to loose 40 of my guppies

i guess ive just screwed up bigtime..

sorry to hear about your fish :tears:

it's always sad to lose a project or some scaley friends, especially when you think you've done the right thing to help them.

31 deg C is in the usual range for guppies so you shouldn't have cooked anything. They can go up to 38 deg C. So, perhaps it was the rapid changes that happened after as mentioned above.

guess it was the 2 water changes, rapid heat change and then the tank change. oh well i learnt a lesson. lost my guppys i just spent heaps of $$ on getting perfect breeders. cheers for all the answers.

Next time just get one strain and try to breed them true. If you put a lot of different strains in together, after a few generations they are likely to be all rubbish.

i had 3 different strains from two different breeders, had them in the same tank, im only new to this, im only breeding for fun and to learn.

Okay, so i got some more guppies on friday, they been in the same tank with the 3-5 surviving guppies. All was okay untill today and yesterday, ive lost about 6-10 . Its a 3ft tank, 160L with about 40 Guppies and some tiny baby BN.

should i remove all the water and start from scratch with water from my other tank? can the water thats in the tank now be contaminated?

are these fish dying jsut due to shock from a new enviroment? if these guys die im probably going to give up :facepalm:

You should really quarantine your fish for 6 weeks before adding them to your exciting tanks and fish

Especially after having a mysterious illness wipe out your stock

people talk about but few rarely do it

6 weeks in a quarantine tank and then add one of your existing stock(one you don't mind loosing) to the quarantine tank

that way you don't wipe out all your precious fish

Guppies are not the easiest fish to keep.