# 3 month old guppies-- reovirus again



## mousey (Jan 18, 2005)

well despite getting a new male and having what I thought were really healthy females from my original guppy line that I started with 6 years ago my female fry have started to die off again at the 3-4 month mark. I have been told this is a reovirus carried by female guppies and my experience is that it starts killing off female fry at this milestone. One day they seem to be fine and the next they are dead.
I also noticed that out of 50-60 guppy fry that I had born in june I now have about 1/2 that number left in the fry tank so I guess they have been self culling over the past few months.
I guess either I have to put up with this issue or stop breeding my own guppies from this line.
My question is, If I stop breeding this line and leave the carriers in the tank but get new females will the virus spread from the old guppies to the new and will I be loooking at a complete strip down of tank and filters to eradicate the reovirus.. Would other fish such as platies carry it or is it specific only to guppies.??


----------



## TheOldSalt (Jan 28, 2005)

Yes, new fish would only get infected, so you might as well strip and start over over. I don't know for sure, but it's very highly likely that any virus carried by guppies would spread to platies.


----------



## emc7 (Jul 23, 2005)

time to switch to cichlids.


----------



## mousey (Jan 18, 2005)

Drat re the virus.
I had a cichlid once. it was a small speck swimming around in the bag that my ottos came in. I decided to grow it out and see what it was. Beautiful blue and black striped fish but it needed to be in a tank by itself as it tried to kill any other fish. Gave it to a friend who added it to his cichlid tank (yellow fish black strip on top fins). IT does really well there.
I guess you might not count my angel fish as a cichlid per se??
What kind do you recommend?
Oh my rainbow fish are throwing eggs all round the last couple of days.Hubby wants me to try and save them but I dunno-- bet egg layers are harder than livebearers.


----------



## emc7 (Jul 23, 2005)

Egg layers are considered harder mainly because the fry are smaller which means they are more fragile and need smaller food. But they usually make more fry than livebearers, so you have a lot of chances. Take the java moss or whatever the eggs are on, put it in a bare tank with a sponge filter and java moss and see what happens. Small live food, like microworms or newly hatched bbs are best, but many can be raised on dry and frozen foods. You can get frozen rotifers, daphia, bbs as well many really good powders (golden pearls, Azoo artifical rotifers and artemia, Hikari first bites, etc.). Keep the water clean and cross your fingers. Don't feed anything until the fry are "free-swimming" with no or little egg-sac left.

Not all egg-layers have little fry. F. gardneri killi eggs are big and the new-hatched fry are comparable to a new-born guppy and they can eat flake right away. Mouthbrooding Malawi cichlid eggs are huge an the momma will care for the babies for you.


----------



## mousey (Jan 18, 2005)

yes and then you have tons of young cichlids to give away.


----------



## emc7 (Jul 23, 2005)

You should try to raise rainbows.


----------



## mousey (Jan 18, 2005)

They have nasty territorial habits.
I have 2 males and 1 female. The males are bigger than the female. I cannot have my female angel fish in the tank because the males beat her up. They will not allow anything in the tank besides orange platies and the pink betta and a couple of very old tetras.
They have really nice markings - red and black- far better than the brownish ones i have seen in Petsmart- perhaps they are mislabelled at Petsmart and big A'ls and not the same. I bought them as Dwarf autralians from Big Al's. paid $10 each for them-- a bit much as they got some later and sold them for $4

http://www.cheshirewaterlife.co.uk/species_livestock/33_RainbowFish.htm

I finally found them on this web site listed as a red stripe splendid rainbow fish - I had to go through about 12 web sites to find them and they sure aren't listed as dwarf australians!! (6th from the bottom)


----------

