Platy stays at top or bottom of my tank

Cecily Clowney · Aug 17, 2019

Hello
I'm a new fish mommy

Meet Greg ! We have had him about two weeks now. The past couple of days I noticed he has been either just hanging at the top or the bottom of tank

We went to pet smart yesterday and the checked my water sample and it was fine!

I have one other platy in the tank with him and it seems to be fine(in fact a bit of a show off).

They are in a ten gallon tank as well. He does have a bit of fin rot but he is being treated for that. Does anybody have an idea of what may be wrong
Thanks for your help
Cece

Essjay · Aug 17, 2019

Did the shop give you numbers for ammonia and nitrite? What is 'fine' to a shop worker could be anything but fine in reality. Can I suggest you get a sample of tank water tested again as soon as possible, but this time make them write the numbers down. The only 'fine' numbers are zero.
Or better still, buy a test kit preferably one with liquid reagents rather than strips.

Did you cycle the tank before getting fish? This means adding ammonia to the tank for several weeks to grow two colonies of bacteria which remove the ammonia excreted by the fish, and made from decomposing fish poo and uneaten food, and then the nitrite made from this ammonia. If you didn't do this, you are doing a fish-in cycle and very likely have ammonia and/or nitrite in the water which is why you need those numbers.

The fish in the photo is a male; do you know what gender the other platy is?

Cecily Clowney · Aug 17, 2019

essjay said:
Did the shop give you numbers for ammonia and nitrite? What is 'fine' to a shop worker could be anything but fine in reality. Can I suggest you get a sample of tank water tested again as soon as possible, but this time make them write the numbers down. The only 'fine' numbers are zero.
Or better still, buy a test kit preferably one with liquid reagents rather than strips.

Did you cycle the tank before getting fish? This means adding ammonia to the tank for several weeks to grow two colonies of bacteria which remove the ammonia excreted by the fish, and made from decomposing fish poo and uneaten food, and then the nitrite made from this ammonia. If you didn't do this, you are doing a fish-in cycle and very likely have ammonia and/or nitrite in the water which is why you need those numbers.

The fish in the photo is a male; do you know what gender the other platy is?

I will definitely go back and get a test kit. PetSmart did not tell me the numbers at all. Also the other fish is female. I believe this is a fish in cycle. My daughter dad set the tank up about a month ago. He didn't put the fish in untill about two weeks ago

Cecily Clowney · Aug 17, 2019

This is the other fish

Essjay · Aug 17, 2019

You definitely need to buy a test kit as you are doing a fish-in cycle. In the meantime, I suggest you do a 50% water change every day. It may not need this, but better safe than sorry. Once you have the test kit, you'll need to test at least once a day and do a water change every time you see ammonia and/or nitrite above zero. The amount to change will depend on how high the levels are, the aim is to get them down to zero. Until the tank has grown enough bacteria, both will continue to rise every day.

The first part of this article https://www.fishforums.net/threads/cycling-your-new-fresh-water-tank-read-this-first.421488/ explains what cycling is, though the second part is about fishless cycling which you can't do with fish.

Just to warn you that male livebearers like platies constantly pester females to breed with them. Your female will be pregnant so some time within the next month expect a lot of baby platies.

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Platy stays at top or bottom of my tank

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