Freshwater Fish Tank Diseases
Is this freshwater fish sickness a disease?!?
Just a couple hours ago one of my female guppies was found dead and removed from my 10 gallon tank. I was suspicious because she was swimming very slowly as if she were sick and seemed to have some kind of intestinal sickness because her poop was clear and long (and on occasion, stringy.)
I found her very “hidden” in the tank in an almost “bent” position when she was dead.
I’m wondering if what she died from is contagious and how/if I can remedy my other fish incase they might already be capable of catching it prior to her removal from the tank.
Thankyou!
EDIT:
The guppy was roughly 2 years old, and I have reason to believe it was going through menopause since it hadn’t given birth in well over two 28-day cycles.
I doubt that your fish was too young to have young if it were already 2 years old. Guppies only live for 3-5 years, and can bear young under a year of age.
White poop is usually a sign of an internal infection (http://www.mu.edu/~buxtoni/puregold/disease/technique/technique.html#JoAnns_diagnosis_by_poop ), but what has me more concerned is the “bent” shape.
Did you by any chance notice if there were red “threads” from the anus when your fish was at rest? The would have looked like this: http://www.alaquairum.net/imagenes/Camallanus1.jpg This is camallanus, a parasitic worm that is highly contaigous. The bent shape is one characteristic of smaller fish which have this parasite. “Regular” parasite medications don’t work on this – you’d need to get Levacide (Levamisole HCl) or Panacur. Depending on what country you’re from, you might be able to find this in a farm supply store (it’s a livestock dewormer), but in others, these are available only by prescription from a veterinarian. Even if you didn’t notice this on the fish that died, you might want to closely observe the other from that tank. It’s only visible when the fish isn’t actively swimming, however – when the fish begins swimming, the worms pull back inside.
More on camallanus: http://www.petfish.net/articles/Diseases/Camallanus.php
http://cache.search.yahoo-ht2.akadns.net/search/cache?ei=UTF-8&p=camallanus+ltreatment&fr=fptb-ver&u=www.inkmkr.com/Fish/CamellanusTreatment.pdf&w=camallanus+camallanu%27s+ltreatment+treatment&d=U9vY0JzfQy9m&icp=1&.intl=us
Freshwater Aquarium Care Information System