Welcome to the forum Hoss!
It doesnt sound as if you have a homicidal guppy to me...byt there is almost certainly something wrong with your water quality. While not having nitrites right now is a good thing, the presence of low levels of ammonia suggests that your tank/pond is not cycled completely yet. While this article, which you can find in our
Articles section or by clicking
HERE, only talks about aquariums and not ponds, the info and ideas on cycling apply to both.
Obviously, when you say that some of your fish were gasping for air, you may also want take the time to ensure that your fish are getting enough oxygen. In fact, this might be one of the easiest things you can do since all that it really takes is to ensure that the surface of the water is getting churned or aggitated. This is what an airstone provides, but you can also use powerheads, filter returns, waterfalls (in the case of your pond), etc...
Also, be sure that the water source you are using does not contain chlorine or chloramines. If you are supplied with 'city water', the odds are very high that the treatment plan utilizes chlorine or chloramines to disinfect the water in order to make it more safe for human consumption, but at the same time, it is more toxic to fish. This can easily be fixed by using a dechlor conditioner which removes both chlorine and chloramines.
Again, welcome to the forum! I hope this will at least get you headed in the right direction!
TG
