Undersized guppies that die in a couple of months

[raecarrow]

I am having trouble with my guppies and I'm afraid that it will effect my loaches eventually as well. Any guppy that I put in my tank never lasts longer than a couple of months. This includes babies that are born into the tank. Half the fry make it to "adulthood" but they never become full sized guppies. The males only ever become half the size of normal males I have seen and the females only ever get slightly bigger than that as well. Some of the guppies appear hollowed out and sickly, but even the ones that don't appear sick end up dying. I had a bad bout of Columnaris that I had to deal with last summer but I have had trouble having my guppies live for more than 3-4 months. Of course they always replenish themselves but I am not keeping healthy adults around. Sometimes I see a white, solid looking protrusion on the anus of the hollowed out guppies, but other than that I have not seen any other signs of the illness (other than a guppy looking sluggish a day or two before death).

I have not yet been able to get my hands on ANY Levomisole. I have no idea where to get it. Any store I go to never seems to have it in stock. Is there anywhere I can order it online?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Rae

[chefkeith]

Levamisole hasn't been available for about a year. It's seems that only the gov't or cocaine dealers have access to it at this time.

http://www.dosenation.com/listing.php?id=6344
http://halturnershow.blogspot.com/2008/ ... oning.html

[Diana]

Rae, try keeping and raising them in these water conditions:
Temperature upper 70s (76-80*F)
GH and KH: between 9-20 degrees. (Hard to very hard water). The high KH will likely make the pH in the upper 7s, perhaps low 8s.
Salt: Add sodium chloride at the rate of 1 tablespoon per gallon.

Feed: Rotation of foods. Read the labels and avoid any food with wheat, other grains or fish meal. You are looking for whole fish and shell fish, spirulina algae and other good things. Frozen or freeze dried things are good, too. Brine Shrimp, Blood worms, and just about all the frozen foods in the stores. If you can find spirulina enhanced brine shrimp, and Emerald Entre, feed these. Guppies appreciate a little bit of vegetable matter in their foods.

The salt is not going to be very good for the plants, but try. See what you can get to grow there. Start a tank with plants and guppies at whatever water conditions they are in now, and begin altering the water a little bit with each water change until they are in water described above. Let it take a month or more. If the plants are going to adapt they need this slow change. They fish could probably adapt in less than a month, but slow is better for them, too, just to make sure.

Keep the tank full of Java Moss, Guppy Grass, Hornwort, Anacharis, floating plants with hanging roots, and other fairly fine, dense plants. These will have a lot of microorganisms that the Guppy babies will eat.

[Diana]

The other question: How inbred are the fish you are currently breeding? Are you using descendants that were brothers and sisters and cousins a few generations back? If your fish have more than about 5 generations of such breeding then get some outside genetic material.

I did not know that Levamisole is not available.
Does Jungle's Parasite medication still have it?
*** few moments later*** Nope! not in there any more. "New Formula"

Fish can be wormed with "Kitten and Puppy Wormer" (piperazine, for round worms), but it takes some preparation. I made some frozen food and added the wormer to that. There are other fish wormers available, such as Prazi-pro.

[raecarrow]

I sell and swap out my guppies on a regular basis. I don't try to breed "pure" strains but get interesting looking fish and see what the babies look like. So they really aren't that inbred.

I keep the tank in the high 70's but I'm not sure about the GH and KH.


I feed a rotation of foods from frozen, pellets, live, etc.

I can't raise the Salt levels of the tank because This tank houses my main community of Loaches (5 yoyos, 1 zebra, 1 kub, 3 black kuhlis) and I know they don't tolerate salt very well. I also have 3 BN plecos in the tank as well.

I have about a two inch thick mat of floating plants at the top of the tank (I regularly have to throw away alot of it because it takes over the tank.

Is there other information that you need?

Thanks for your help thus far.

[Diana]

It sounds like a nice set up as long as the water is not too soft.

The best Guppy I ever raised was in my brackish water tank. The Gups I have in soft water tanks are sort of on the small side. Not as dwarfed as yours seem, and they are long lived, just not as big as that one...