wounded fish

Question
I have a 5 gallon tank with a few guppies (all full grown), a ghost shrimp and some snails. This tank has been set up for about 6 months. For all of the tanks I own: I check the pH, ammonia, nitrate, etc. every week (and more often if needed) and I do weekly 15-25 water changes (and 50 water changes every few weeks). I have Tetra Whisper filters in all of my tanks.

I left the house for about 7 hours today and when I got home, I noticed one of my female guppies had the top of her tail fin missing as well as a small part of the top of her body behind her dorsal fin. I have had pet fish for about a year and I have a few separate tanks, and I have never had this happen to any of my fish. So naturally, I have no idea what caused this. Did one of the other guppies do this to her? They have never shown aggression before and I feed them enough for them to not want to eat other fish. Could she have gotten stuck in the filter somehow? Or is she sick?

Answer
Hi Mandy;

Poor little thing. If the edges are pretty clean and it happened fast I would say one of the other critters nipped at her. If she did get stuck on the filter intake, the snail the shrimp or even the other fish could easily take advantage and bite her. Watch her to be sure infection doesn't set in. Infection would make it look fuzzy, reddish or whitish. If it looks like that at all you will need to get an antibitotic or antifungal. You would need to separate her to a separate tank for treatment though. The shrimp and snails might be killed by the medicine.

I hope she feels better soon....

At Your Service;
Chris Robbins