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I have a guppy with dropsy....yesterday I moved my Platies out of my 10 gallon tank into my 30 gallon community tank and put her in there alone so I could treat her....a few days before I moved them, my orange Platly gave birth and I moved all the babies to my "Baby" tank.....I started treating my dropsy guppy with Maracyn-Two yesterday....today I found fry in the tank....and before I thought much about it....moved them to my "Baby" tank thinking that they may be Platlies that I missed the other day.....but after looking at them more closely I am sure that they are guppies..........My question is....If the new babies are for sure my dropsy guppy's fry....will they automatically have it to, and will they contaminate my "Baby" tank??? If so is it safe to treat the babies?

That post can get complicated...

If your Gup was loaded with fry then that would account for the body "bulge".

If the Gup was pineconed then I would guess she could have Dropsy and also be pregnant since fish pregnancies sometimes affect kidneys, the reason for Dropsy.

Fluid buildup, as in pregnant human females, can have a negative effect not only on kidneys but the liver as well.

Kidney failure/liver failure is often observed in some pregnant species of trops causing swollen stomachs and pineconed scales. After delivery the female trop usually dies.

Can fry be treated?? No.

Can fry contract Dropsy from the female?? No.

No meds will moderate Dropsy. Once the swelling is noticed the trop is in the final stages.

--garyroland.

--Vero Beach, Florida.

She was pregnant when she started showing signs of dropsy.....I have read on many web sites that dropsy can not be cured...but the Mayacyn <mardel company> says that their meds can cure it.......Is it kidney(renal)failure that causes the scales to stick out? I have had 3 similar cases with a swordtail and a 2 mollies where they had "dropsy" symptoms....delivered their fry then died.....the babies all eventually died as well....should I stop the meds and euthanize my fish? What an awful thought!....

Keep in mind that no one knows for sure whether or not Dropsy is contageous...

I'm leaning to the side of no contagion since individuals have died from the disease/condition while others in the same tank remained unaffected.

Fry born from a trop with Dropsy may have failed to properly develope but I doubt the disease/condition was passed on to them.

The Mardel people can claim cures all they want but the fact remains, after trying just about every med available, no cure has been accomplished once the bloating and pineconing becomes evident.

If you are a psychic and can determine Dropsy is starting in your trop, then the antibiotic "Gentamycin" has had success in the most early stages of the disease.

We haven't determined, at least I haven't, the exact cause of renal failure in trops. Be it bacterial or viral, it's a nasty disease that refuses to spare its victims.

Destroying your trops believing they're all infected would be totally premature. If other trops show signs of the disease then you can consider removing them immediately and destroying them.

I doubt you'll have a mass problem with Dropsy. Let's hope I don't have to eat my words.

--garyroland.

--Vero Beach, Florida.

Keep in mind that no one knows for sure whether or not Dropsy is contageous...

dropsy is not contagious, it is a condition resulting from renal failure. However, the causes of the renal failure can be contagious, and there is really no way to know why the kidneys failed unless something is obviously wrong in the tank, eg. massive overuse of salt.

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I like to think that whoever designed marine life was thinking of it as basically an entertainment medium. That would explain some of the things down there, some of the unearthly biological contraptions

As I've explained before...

Edema..."An abnormal infiltration and excess accumulation of serous fluid in connective tissue or in a serous cavity. Also called "Dropsy".

Failing kidneys due to a bacterial or viral invasion are believed to be the culprit.

It's my estimate that a partial immunity loss in some trops due to bad water conditions may cause the bacterial edema problem

--garyroland.



Last edited by garyroland at 17-Oct-2004 10:50