# My tank is Guppy H3LL



## jrman83 (Jul 9, 2010)

Not sure what has been going on with my tank (75gal). My guppies seem to be affected by something in my tank. I had one die yesterday, 2 are near death, and one is starting to look a little rough. They have no outward symptons visible. They just seem to start to go inactive and just sit in one place in the tank. All the fish I loose seem to be at about the 2-3 week point of being in my tank. Once or twice there has been some almost scaling appearance on their body as if they were peeling like you would if you got sunburned.

I test my water all the time especially when one of the fish look a little on the weak side. My temp is 78F, ph 8.2, 0 ammonia/nitrite, and about a 5 on nitrate. I did a 20% water change last night.

On the other side of things, my Platys are thriving. Out of the 19 platys that have made it into my tank (tank setup 30May - finished cycling almost 2wks ago), only 2 have died - within a couple of days of the fish store. A few of them have been in there 8wks and there are 5 new ones added this past weekend. Although there has been one that has had clamped fins from day one and every other Platys chases it in the tank and picks on it, I don't think that this fish is sick, but could be wrong. She has been in there for nearly 3wks.

So...anyone have a clue what is going on with the Guppies? Is my ph too high? I have to use well water and that is about what it comes out as. When I was having this problem about 10 days ago I used ph7.0 to bring it down to about 7.6 and it seemed to help. But, after talking to you guys about how bad using that stuff is I stopped. Could this be some form of bacteria?

Any help would be appreciated.


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## LPUIG73 (Jul 18, 2010)

I have a good friend who bred fancy guppies in an old cast iron bath tub in his basement, with a good air pump, and he used peat moss as the substrate as a means to lower his water's pH. His pH was a steady 6.6-6.8 - very close to conditions found in nature from where those fish originate. He used about two inches of peat moss and one inch above it of stone gravel to weigh down the peat moss. You could take this example and change your setup to better control your water's pH. The side benefit of using peat moss as your primary substrate is also that many aquatic plants will grow best in such a substrate. For example, Banana plants (Nymphoides aquatica) will flower with enough light when planted in such a substrate. The nutrient-rich peat moss is ideal for that plant's root system.

If you have a 75 gallon tank, I would recommend keeping a small nursery tank too, if possible, say a 10 gallon tank.. You could then use the nursery tank for quarantining sick fish and medicating the sick fish. If there is a parasite or bacteria in one of your fish in the 75 gallon, those germs can spread like wildfire among your other fish.

Good luck.. but I strongly recommend to use the peat moss and even driftwood to help lower that high pH.


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