I never pruned a guava tree, but I have pruned a lot of other fruiting plants. Here is my guess: 1) trim all dead wood, any time 2) this coming winter, trim 1/3 of the live wood. Cut at a juncture, leaving no spurs. In its final version (3 years later), a small bird should be able to fly through the tree. If some branches are too long, cut them short somewhere where there is a side branch, so they have less of a lever arm next year 3) next spring give it compost and water, and thin the fruits as you are doing now

It was more than likely a branch that broke off high up in the tree during the storm but got caught and jammed up in the other branches and finely slid off the healthy undamaged branches that were holding it up there on that calm day. You can step far back and look up in the canopy of the tree for any more branches that might be caught up there but if there are none I would not worry about it (If you are really worried you could get someone with a bucket truck to inspect up in the tree for any dead hanging or cracked branches). Topping is the last think you would want for a tree it can lead to many future problems for a tree. Some species of trees cannot even sprout back limbs if they are topped which will kill it and the ones that do will shoot tons of tiny weak twig shoots that break off in the wind as they get larger. It made me sick that a local very large and old Water Oak tree I aways liked very much which even had a engraved stone by it in place for it's historical value and was topped by a tree service company in early spring (Right after they topped it I knew it would soon die because it was a old water oak and the 2nd or 3 water Oak I've seen die after a topping) it finely died this summer. Many tree service people don't know what topping leads to or they just don't care one bit if a tree dies they just want money.

orchidguy is right. In most cases, pruning paint/sealer is not only useless in fending off unwanted problems, but can prevent a woody plant from doing its own 'healing'. It was once thought that these products kept disease pathogens from entering a wound, but we know, now, that that is not the case. The only times that I would ever recommend that a sealer be used is if the plant in question is susceptible to a particular type of borer insect and it was the time of year for that borer to be active.

figfarmer, yeah, I know that. But I was aiming for the search engines to spider this, and when anyone types "killing a fig tree", it might come up with this. And if I'm lucky, that person happens to be in the local bay area. = ) Oh, well, just looking for blind luck, because I really want a large tree.