Guppy people - help with male guppy

Hello again

I just noticed a problem with one of my new guppies. He seems to only be swimming at the upper surface of the water, just going back and forth with his head at the surface. The rest of his body is lower, like he is dragging it along. He has the longest tail out of all my guppies, so I don't know if that has anything to do with it.

I am new to guppies (and everything else) and have never seen this behavior before, sorry if it's normal

(video if you look in my profile, under job/hobbies is my youtube page)

P.S. forgot to add: All of the other guppies in the tank seem fine, and parameters are good except PH is a little high @ 7.8 or so. Ammonia and nitrite 0, nitrate 5-10ppm. Don't have a hardness kit, could this be an issue?

So, after doing a little research, I think my tank may have gotten too hot out in the greenhouse, and that could have caused the oxygen levels to drop. So, I have added an air pump to agitate the surface. Also, and I didn't know this before, but apparently as temperature rises, the level of ammonia needed to become toxic drops. Here's a quote from another forum:

"Ammonia is MORE toxic at a higher pH and a higher temperature.
Ammonia toxicity is significantly influenced by temperature and pH. The lower the temperature and pH the more ammonia can be tolerated.
Lethal ammonia concentrations at a pH of 6.5 are 0.73 ppm, while at pH 8.5 only 0.17 ppm are considered lethal to inhabitants.

A fish tank kept at 68 degrees F can tolerate more then twice the amount of ammonia as a tank kept at 86 degrees F."

This is good to know. I might do a big waterchange as well to bring the temp down some.

All livebearers like the higher PH that comes along with a decent KH.  They also tend to prefer a higher GH than our water offers.  I had trouble consistently keeping livebearers alive for years, so I gave up on them for a while.  I'm trying again with modified water (Seachem alkaline buffer and equilibrium) - dKH of 9 and dGH of 11.  So far I'm 2 weeks into a trio of petsmart platies and they're all very healthy and active - no clamped fins, no strange behavior, not reclusive, and no spots or anything.  That same tank used to be a grinder for platies - especially males.  Granted, 2 weeks isn't very long, but I had several that died inside that time.  Fingers crossed!

My water out of the tap: 5 dKH, 4 dGH; this is pretty soft.

Extra surface agitation is always a good thing, unless you're shooting for a planted show tank.

A properly operating biological filter will keep ammonia out of the water.  Your levels are 0, so that's not likely to be your problem.  Floating plants can help improve water quality if they have enough light to grow.  Fish (and fry especially) like them too - livebearers love to pick at them.  Get the right kind and they're easy to remove (frogbit or water lettuce are my picks for water quality - I have some in every one of my tanks).

Yeah, I have some water lettuce in there, and also I added a water hyacinth pretty much at the same time as this guy and his buddy. Interestingly, his friend, who I got at the same time and place, seems to be doing fine along with all the other guppies.

To hopefully up the hardness, I have added some more crushed coral, but do you have any suggestions for raising the hardness? I don't have a huge budget for test kits and special additives, and I don't really want to use all that stuff, but something I can do with waterchanges like add baking soda?

Thanks for the suggestions, I thought about the hardness issue after I posted last time.

What do clamped fins mean? I have noticed that this male hasn't spread out his tail or his dorsal fin this whole time I have been watching him, is that what that means?

Edit (more info): He has stopped swimming at the surface for now, and seems to be resting along the bottom like my others do at night. He looks like he's trying to breathe fast, but I'm not sure. Also, when he does swim, he seems to be constantly wobbling from side to side and now really using his tail

The API GH / KH test kit on Amazon is $9 - not too bad. You really can't modify your water without knowing your baseline.

I agree though - modifying your water isn't terribly fun. I have a 1/10g accuracy scale that I use during water changes and a printed spreadsheet with targets for GH/KH along with grams/gal on all the tanks I'm modifying (5, currently) and a calculator of course.

My hardness modification is for 2 reasons - the platies and snails. Crushed coral didn't get the job done with mystery snails in the past, which is why I'm using seachem equilibrium for that (GH).

Baking soda will increase your KH (you should be able to find dosing information via google/bing), but does nothing for your GH, unfortunately.

It's entirely possible that the unhappy guppy is just the luck of the draw. The best approach is probably to keep an eye on things - if other fish start behaving oddly then you'll know you have a real issue.

The primary indications of health problems in livebearers are clamped fins (all fins held close to the body) and shimmying in place (you'll know this when you see it). It sounds like yours is doing both of these, so I wouldn't expect it to last long, unfortunately. I know absolutely nothing about treating fish or what you'd even do in a situation like this to improve its chances, unfortunately. I generally just punt and try again at this point.

You might ask Cory; I'm trying boosted GH with my livebearers thanks to some advice and information from him on how big-box store livebearers are raised in fish farms over-seas (brackish) and acclimated to hard water when they're shipped here. All the net information out there I can dig up on them recommends higher GH and KH than our water has. The conventional wisdom is that they can tolerate less, especially if born and raised in different water. But that means I have to search out local breeders, and that takes time and effort.

I'd keep a close eye on it, but if it's a new addition to the tank it could just be settling in. But yeah in general hard water high ph.

You could try adding a tablespoon per 5 gallons of aquarium salt to help temporarily.

Tried half that dose to start, but just went out to look and discovered a dead guppy stuck to the filter intake

I think this is my first loss in a while other than inverts, kind of a sad day. I don't know what his deal was, but all of his tankmates seem fine, including all the fry, which have grown nicely on all the overfeeding I've probably been doing. Maybe he was just stressed out enough or weak enough that the temp getting a little high today did him in. Oh well, I still got that sweet looking magenta male from you, and I might be coming in again tomorrow for new fun stuff. I don't know what all that is yet, but I will see you there at 12. I think I will get some of that repashy food... it's really good, everyone seems to love it. Thanks for the samples

So far, I don't see any ill signs in any of the other fish, though I did find a dead shrimp this morning. I think it was my old ghost shrimp girl, who has been with me for at least a year, and looks like she died during molting. Hopefully it's her and not one of the RCS, because those are a much more recent purchase. It looked to me like a ghost though, too big to be one of my RCS

I found RCS much easier to keep than ghost shrimp. My ghosts slowly died one by one... years ago.

So ghost shrimp.... This is another guppy like scenario. All ghost shrimp are brought in as feeders. They're cheap. The problem is they're all caught in brackish water. The reason many stores don't sell ghost shrimp is due to how they tend to die. I can literally order 500 ghost shrimp and be lucky to have 50 left at the end of the week if I don't add salt to the water.

That makes complete sense. Pretty soon I'll have boosted GH in all my tanks...

I have had good success with ghost shrimp in the past, but that was when I was adding freshwater aquarium salt to my little 10 gallon. That might have made the difference as to why I was able to keep them alive and everyone else had them all die.

I haven't been adding much aquarium salt lately, since I don't want to have to keep adding it all the time. I think I'm down to 1 ghost shrimp now, but all the other shrimp don't seem to care