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This is a bit of a mystery to me. I had two pregnant guppies in breeder nets. It turns out that they liked to sit right underneath the part of the aquarium light that overlapped the top of the nets. I think they sat so close for a while and got some sort of sunburn.

Anyway, one got a large bleached patch on its back with all the colour completely gone. It later developed a fungus (since treated) which decimated the skin in the area - I looks it took the scales right off and down to the flesh (!!!). It was all the way from the dorsal fin to its head. It was nasty, I thought it would surely die. Much to my suprise, a week has passed and it is growing back and is looking promising. (I'm not sure about the fry though)

The other fish went darker. It dropped its fry - which are doing nicely in another tank BTW. It is a grey skin guppy, but now has black all over the upper half of its body. And it now has a coloured light purple streak from its dorsal fin down both sides to the front of the tail. The angle is the same on both sides. It doesn't look spotty at all - rather smooth in fact. The fish is showing NO signs of distress, lethargy or irritiation at all. It is happily swimming with the rest of them.

On one hand, if its a problem it needs to be treated. But, if its just damaged skin/pigment/whatever, then medicating it would just be stressfull to an apparently happy fish.

The other odd thing is that this fish has solid black eyes. It doesn't seem to have any trouble seeing though. It is just as active as the others and when I feed them some of my spare baby brine shrimp it gets its fair share.

What do people think? Is damaged skin plausible? (Remember the other one with the burnt skin that was later attacked by fungus.) Or is it too risky to take chances? And if so, treat it with what?

I also have a new (and young, not obviously pregnant yet) gold with red tail guppy that has got a big split in its tail. Besides the split it *looks* like its in perfect condition - no rot or other damage. But, since the split it has been very quiet and sits near the surface away from the others. I've been thinking of taking it out of the tank for some peace and quiet while (hopefully) recovering. Unfortunately, I have some yoyo botia loaches (damn snails!) that seem to like lunging at the guppies occasionally, and I suspect that one of them nipped its tail. But what is bothering me is why is it so quiet and still? Perhaps it is just suffering from being recently introduced to the tank (2 days ago).

I'd love to get photos, but my camera isn't cooperating.

(The tank chemistry appears fine, pH around 7.0, temp is a little high at around 80F, no salt)

what are the reading s for ammonia, nitrite and nitrate? How many fish are in the tank? WE'll need some more info

About the split in the tail, you may want to add some salt to your tank. It's one of the best things you can do for your fish, kinda like chicken soup. That is, of course, assuming that all your fish can tolerate salt. I know guppies like it, but not sure about the loaches. Add some Melafix as well, it is an antiseptic made with tea tree oil that will help prevent infection and promote healing in the fin.

What happened to the "sun-burnt" guppy sounds more like Columnaris to me... see here to read more about columnaris.

Its a little hard to read the test stick colours sometimes, but as near as I can tell:
pH: very close to 7.0
ammonia: 0 ppm
nitrite: 0 ppm
nitrate: slightly more than 20ppm (Much lower than 40ppm)

I was thinking of moving the split tail guppy to a smaller tank, but it is such a PITA to get the cycle going. I have one spare 3 gallon tank that is mostly complete on a fishless cycle that I'd hoped keep for emergencies. I dont want to put salt in that one yet. I have some other small uncycled tanks that I can use for medication but they're not ready yet. (damn, need more room again!). Maybe I should just find a spare flat spot and get it over and done with.

I haven't been able to get a good photo of her, she's hiding from me.
http://canning.wemm.org/~peter/fish07.jpg (facing away from the camera)
But at least it shows the size of the split.

As for the fish with the "burn", yes, I saw the saddleback columnaris info and wondered about it. What made me doubt it was that this happened over a month since the last contact with new fish, and the white patch had no visible fungus for 4 days - and even then that was after I moved it to a seperate tank for insurance. The patch did not go down the sides, it stayed on the flat top of the fish and didn't have the saddle shape. Anyway, I guessed that the fish baked itself at the surface right under the light and severely damaged its slime coat which allowed a fungus infection. Anyway, she's looking much better, but seems to have aborted this batch of fry yesterday.

http://canning.wemm.org/~peter/fish06.jpg (top down view)
http://canning.wemm.org/~peter/fish04.jpg (lousy side shot)
http://canning.wemm.org/~peter/fish03.jpg (lousy side shot)

I included the two side shots because it shows that she's rounded again instead of being boxy. It looked like her gravid spot changed to a redish colour and then she dumped several loads of red feces. She's still the size of a truck though. I let her out of the net and the males chased her like she was the only female in the tank (she's 1 of 9) - I ended up separating her again so she had more time to finish healing.

And the other fish that I was worried about is this one:
http://www.wemm.org/~peter/fish05.jpg
This is the mother of the week-old fry. She's still rather huge.

The picture doesn't do the colour on the tail justice. Its a light purple rather than the white that it looks like here. It tends to fluoresce under the lights. This photo shows how her skin darkened in general. She was the same colour as the one in fish06.jpg before all this happened - to the point that we had trouble distinguishing the two. Now she's darker in general. Anyway, I can't tell if it is something on her skin or the skin itself. Even with a magnifying glass (damn, thats hard to arrange... luckily they're very curious)

The more I think about it, the more I want to pull her out just in case.

For what its worth, the fish with the split tail (fish07.jpg above) has become a little more active over the last day. But she's still much quieter than the others.

Any comments on the colour patch on fish05.jpg?

Does the fish06.jpg picture still look like columnaris to anybody? (Or post-columnaris recovery?)