Platies are dying I am confused need help

Colin_T said:

If you get a glass of water and add some fish food. Wait an hour and then test that water for ammonia. There should be an ammonia reading caused by the fish food breaking down in the glass of water.

----------------------
Your original post would suggest a water quality issue (ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, pH or low GH) or a chemical poisoning the fish.

Do you use a bucket specifically for the fish tank or do you use any bucket in the house?

Make sure you don't have any creams, grease, oil, perfume, or any chemicals on your hands when working on the fish. Use a perfume free soap to wash up. If you use anti-bacterial soap, wash your hands with water only before working in the tank because they can leave a residue behind that poisons fish.

If you can post some pictures of the sick or dead fish it helps us identify the problem.

Click to expand...

Hi Colin,
Sure will try out the fish food in a glass of water,but is 1 hour enough or should i rest it overnight, and check my ammonia test kit solution.
Again today i did a water test here are latest readings..

Ammonia - 0 to 0.25
Nitrite - 0
Nitrate - 0 to 10 ppm (hard to match from 5 in1 strip, but it was pale white with a very light tinge of rose)
Ph - 7 from strip, 7.2 to 7.4 from solution(may look darker in pic)
Gh - 40 to 50 ppm
Kh - 40 ppm

My first dose of seachem equlibrium did not raise the gh or kh or if it did was absorbed by plants, will add a dosage today with my water change..

sorry i did not take a photo of my died fish, but i do have a photo when it was alive 2 days before it left me.i have attached it not sure if that would help. It was hovering on the surface for few days just as other platies did befire they died..

I have also attached the test results from my recent test..

In general i get a very soft water, so to maintain balance and to increase hardness in water is equilibrium best or should i consider alkaline buffer, also can i use baking soda/baking powder to increase carbanote hardness?..

One confusion i have is whether my tank is still cycling so as a result do i keep losing one fish per week or is there some parasite like gill flukes or something which affects them. I tend to think the latter because if it was ammonia poisoning many fishes should have shown poisoning symptoms simultaneously, not sure if it may show symptoms one by one after one fish dies, other fish starts with same symptoms.. hopefully tank gets established over time soon..

Having fish food in a glass of water for 1 hour should show an ammonia reading. You can test it after an hour and then test the same glass of water 24 hours later. The ammonia should increase over the 24 hour period.

---------------------
I prefer a Rift Lake water conditioner to increase hardness. Most pet shops sell it and you can use 1/2 to 3/4 strength for live bearers. The Rift Lake water conditioners have more minerals in them and will increase GH, KH & pH.

You can use baking soda (Sodium bicarbonate) to increase the KH but you need to add a small amount each day and watch the pH because it can raise the pH very quickly if you add too much. However, KH is not as important as GH when it comes to livebearers like platies.

If it is chemicals in the water, then hard water with a GH above 250ppm will help to bind with some of the chemicals and there should be less issues with possible poisoning from external sources.

Chemicals can also be removed by Activate carbon or Highly Activated carbon that is put in the filter and replaced each week. You could also try holding the water in a separate container and dechlorinating it and filtering it through carbon for 24 hours before using it in the aquarium.

---------------------
The fish in the picture has partially clamped fins and is staying just under the surface. The clamped fins can be from something in the water or a bacterial or protozoan infection. Gasping at the surface can be something in the water, gill flukes or a bacterial or fungal infection in the gills. Gill infections are rare. Gill flukes are common but don't cause fish to clamp their fins and don't kill fish quickly. Water quality issues are the most likely cause.

---------------------
If the tank has had fish in for less than 4 weeks, it is unlikely to have finished cycling. Most aquariums take about 2-3 weeks to develop the first colonies of beneficial filter bacteria that eat ammonia and convert it into nitrite. Once there is nitrite in the water it takes a couple more weeks for more bacteria to grow and convert the nitrite into nitrate. Tanks are normally cycled after 4-5 weeks but it can take a lot longer.

If you have lots of plants in the tank they can use the ammonia and stop the filter bacteria from growing as quickly and this can lead to tanks that do not appear to have cycled. Once these tanks have been run for a couple of months they can be considered as having cycled because small amounts of bacteria will be in the tank and will use ammonia at night when it is dark and the plants are sleeping.

You tank has a few plants and if you are only putting a small amount of food in the tank, the plants could be using any ammonia as soon as it's produced.

Seven scissortail rasboras might need a bit more room when fully grown. They regularly grow to 4 inches in length and are active swimmers. However, they do well in soft water so you won't need to add the Seachem Equilibrium or a Rift Lake conditioner to increase the GH for them. If you want platies then get a second tank for platies and increase the hardness.

There is a possibility the platies you got simply had health issues when you got them and moving them from the shop to your tank put too much pressure on them and the combination of moving sick fish to a new tank is what killed them.

At this stage do not add any more fish. Feed the fish a small amount of food once every couple of days and do a 75% water change 4-8 hours after feeding them. Make sure you use a clean bucket that has not had anything except water in. Dechlorinate any new water and aerate it for 30 minutes before adding it to the tank. Monitor the fish and if any act funny or stop feeding, take pictures and post here asap.

If you put a picture on the back of the tank it will help reduce the stress on the fish.

The symptoms described are almost certainly due to the soft water. You cannot keep livebearers alive for long in water this soft.

Equilibrium is not going to work here, it is a mineral additive for plants. Seachem make a similar product for fish, I cannot remember the name, but this will get very expensive. And as you increase the GH/pH for the platy it is going to be detrimental to the soft water species.

Baking soda as a buffer will not work. For one thing, it is the GH that must be increased, and the pH will then follow. Baking soda has drawbacks as Stanley Weitzman outlined in an article a few years back, but I needn't get into all that because it is not going to work here anyway.

You need to decide which you want and proceed accordingly. But all these additives which are not increasing GH/KH/pH are harming all the fish; the less substances added to water the better.

Hi All,

Just wanted to update my sad state..actually my scissortail Rasboras too started dying. 1 fish per 5 to 6 days. nNiw i have only 3 left. 4 had died in last 3 to 4 weeks.

Apart from these 3 i had got two small mystery snails, they are growing pretty fast, they are extremely active and healthy.

My diatoms brown algae too got replaced with green ones, I have some patches of green algae. My plants are thriving. They are getting nice and bushy.The only thing that does not look healthy unfortunately are my fish.

As I said I routinely keep checking parameters and they are almost still the same . Gh - 60ppm(slight increase from previous post), kh - 30 ppm, ammonia -0, nitrite - 0, nitrate - 0. Ph - 7.
Temp _ 76 to 77 F.

The pattern i noticed with my Rasboras are at a time one fish out of all are acting wierdly, they dont swim properly, kind of upside down and sideways. As and when i notice them i put them to quarantine tub ( did not get a tank), put an airstone 1 to 2 drops of prazi pro and place them there. They rest in tub for 2 days or so and finally they die.

I feed them seachem nutridiet chlorella flakes with probiotics (exp date 2020).I feed just once a day about a small to medium flake crushed into tiny bits.They all finish them in about a minute.

I am worried where i am going wrong, atleast for me i think most of things i do correctly, but i definitely know somewhere something is wrong..hopeful of finding that missing piece soon.. please help ifyou guys have any suggestions..Thanks!!

Byron said:

The symptoms described are almost certainly due to the soft water. You cannot keep livebearers alive for long in water this soft.

Equilibrium is not going to work here, it is a mineral additive for plants. Seachem make a similar product for fish, I cannot remember the name, but this will get very expensive. And as you increase the GH/pH for the platy it is going to be detrimental to the soft water species.

Baking soda as a buffer will not work. For one thing, it is the GH that must be increased, and the pH will then follow. Baking soda has drawbacks as Stanley Weitzman outlined in an article a few years back, but I needn't get into all that because it is not going to work here anyway.

You need to decide which you want and proceed accordingly. But all these additives which are not increasing GH/KH/pH are harming all the fish; the less substances added to water the better.

Click to expand...

If fish start swimming upside down and spiralling through the water, or having trouble swimming normally, they usually have a protozoan infection in their brain. This is commonly found in dirty tanks or tanks with lots of organic matter in.

Big (75%) daily water changes and gravel cleaning, combined with cleaning the filter, will sometimes fix the issue. Fish that are showing the symptoms usually die.