Friday 13th Clames Guppy

Hello All

Sad to report one of my Guppy's has died and another not looking to well out of the six I bought about 3 weeks ago. Breakfast Roll call revealed only four Guppy's and six Tetra's.

They were all fine yesterday. Four look all ok. I have changed about 20% of the water every week and cleaned the filter as per the advice on this wonderful forum. I have been leaving the light off to try and reduce the algae problem which seems to be subsiding. Do fish benefit from the electric light? Also I have had a read on a similar thread and it seems it could be just bad luck one of those things. Be great to read your thought's guys and gals.

I lost a number of guppies in the first few months, I'm afraid. They have been weakened by too much inbreeding for fancy colours and seem to be happy one evening.... and singing in the choir celestial next morning. They do benefit from a mature tank. My remaining guppies are now dying of old age as they approach their second birthday.

A mature tank is one that has been running trouble free for 6 months after it has cycled.
A cycled tank is one that has enough bacteria in the filter to deal with the waste from the fish that are in there now.

Cycling grows the bacteria necessary to deal with the ammonia made by the fish but there are loads of other micro-organisms that need to grow and it takes time for them to establish themselves. For some reason that is not understood, some fish appear to need all those other micro-organisms to be present when they are put in the tank.


A test kit is important for any fishkeeper. You need to be able to test for ammonia, nitrite and pH in a new tank. Once it has been running several months, testing is less important. But even then, the water should be tested if any of the fish start behaving oddly, or when new fish are put in the tank. Liquid testers are more accurate than dip-in strips. A set containing pH, ammonia, nitrite and nitrate works out cheaper than buying them separately. On-line is cheaper than 'real' shops.

Definitely get your test kit online, compare £35 in pets at home with £20 on Amazon!
Sorry about your fish.   

Yep. Unless I think there's a problem I never test for Ammonia or Nitrate now my tank's a couple of years old, but I do keep an eye on Nitrate to chack I'm changing enough water. As the Nitrate uses 10 drops you get through it faster than the others so I've bought just the Nitrate testers on line to keep that part of the kit topped up.

I assume you mean you never test for nitrite now 

I usually manage to spot my typos before anyone else notices 

It is common for guppies to just die for no apparent reason. They don't act sick, there are no tell tale signs on the body; they are just dead.
The first couple of weeks is quite common for fish to die. If they are at all weak, the trauma they have been through, from the wholesaler through the shop to your tank, sees them off.
And a lot of fish already have a disease when you buy them. I recently bough five peacock gobies; three of them died within a week with bulging eyes and red streaked bodies, though the last two are doing well. This is one reason we should all quarantine our fish for at least two weeks, preferably more, before putting them in the proper tank. I didn't this time and I was lucky they didn't pass the disease on to the other fish already there.