male guppy spine

Question
Hello, my name is Amy and i have a male guppy, going a year old in this coming march and i have 9 of them (7 male, 2 female, they are from one birthing) and one of the males i don't think is eating, but he started out turning on his left side and would try to flip himself into the turn to right himself, like a dog rolling over, but with a lot of struggle. Now it has been 24 hrs, and his spine has know curled him into a circle..like a "C" shape and is still breathing. I have him and two other male fish in a 5.5 gallon tank and a ten gallon with 4 males and one more ten gallon with the 2 females.The two males with him are fine as far as i know.. but should i move them into the ten gallon with the other males and try salt to see if it will help my poor male guppy? Right now the water is more on the basic side, I don't know what to do but the poor thing is suffering severely and it is so sad to see.What do I do?

Answer
Hi Amy,

I pulled your question out of the question pool.  Bent spines are classic symptoms of one of two diseases, neither one very effectively cured.  It sounds like either internal parasites or fish TB.

For the internal parasites you could try and seclude him into his own tank of at least 5 gallons and treat with medicated food specifically for parasites but usually once the spine is bent it is too far gone.

Fish tuberculosis is extremely contagious (even to humans) so watch your other fish closely and make sure you wash your hands thouroughly after doing anything with your tanks.  This requires an anti-biotic from the vet to cure but usually a guppy is not strong enough to respond and by the time fish TB is noted it's too late to treat.

Please test your water parameters asap and make sure that you have no ammonia, no nitrites and 5-20 ppm nitrates so that no other fish succumb to illness.

Good luck : ) April M.