Guppy with Dropsy and Fin Rot

[sean_grimes]

Well I've had my tank for about 8 months now and most everything has been going good. I leave to go out of state for a month and left my aquarium at home for my family to watch after.

I come back and all my fish are alive, surprisingly, but it seems like a guppy has dropsy and fin rot :( He is pineconed out pretty bad and the top half of his tail is pretty much missing with white and red outlined on it. No one told me about it while I was away because they didn't want me to worry but I fear it may be too late for this little guy.

He stays at the surface all the time, even when I change my water. He used to play in the incoming stream but still stayed over in the corner. I did a 50% change when I got back because apparently my family didn't do a change in the last month.

I've been home a few hours and fed him and he ate but is still lethargic and not moving out of the top corner. I do not have a hospital tank and considering putting him out of his suffering.. Any suggestions?

20 gallon long
2 guppy
5 neon tetra
5 ghost shrimp
planted
7.6 pH, 0 ammonia, 0 nitrites, ~20-40ppm nitrates

[madagascariensis]

Sorry for your guppy.
They aren't as tough as they used to be. Once a fish has dropsy there is no longer a cure in most cases. I would just put it down humanely

[sean_grimes]

What's making it tough now is that the other guppy keeps swimming around him and they're going back and forth in circles. The sick one is actually moving around to different water levels now, but the rot and pineconed scales look so painful.

[ScottishFish]

Dropsy is usually brought on by terrible water conditions, so maybe your family didn't change the tank water for a month?

Dropsy is like shutdown of all the fishes internal organs. Really his days are numbered now, best to put him down.

[sean_grimes]

yeah neither my parents nor my sister remembered to do a water change. I reckon the bad water conditions would be high nitrates because the ammonia and nitrites were 0.

I've read mixed ways on the best way to humanely euthanize them from using clove oil then alcohol, to quickly cutting him in half. Does anyone have any other ways to do it?

I guess I'll have to do the deed in the morning, the 2 guppies are sleeping next to each other one last time. argh...

[madagascariensis]

Physically killing works best with larger fish because you can better aim at a vulnerable spot of the body. With a guppy it is hard to hit the brain to kill it as fast as possible(just cutting him through the middle will likely prolong his suffering) I would go with clove oil because most other common methods( such as alcohol or freezing) have been reported to cause a lot more pain than expected by the aquarist.