Sick platy

Colin_T said:

It looks like it's about to die. You can trying doing a 75% water change and gravel clean the substrate every day for a week. This will help get the ammonia level down to 0ppm, where it should be.

Make sure your filter is working properly and don't replace filter media/ materials.

Add some salt.
You can add rock salt (often sold as aquarium salt), sea salt or swimming pool salt to the aquarium at the dose rate of 1 heaped tablespoon per 20 litres of water. If there is no improvement after 48 hours you can double that dose rate so there is 2 heaped tablespoons of salt per 20 litres.

If you only have livebearers (guppies, platies, swordtails, mollies), goldfish or rainbowfish in the tank you can double that dose rate, so you would add 2 heaped tablespoons per 20 litres and if there is no improvement after 48 hours, then increase it so there is a total of 4 heaped tablespoons of salt per 20 litres.

Keep the salt level like this for at least 2 weeks but no longer than 4 weeks otherwise kidney damage can occur. Kidney damage is more likely to occur in fish from soft water (tetras, Corydoras, angelfish, gouramis, loaches) that are exposed to high levels of salt for an extended period of time, and is not an issue with livebearers, rainbowfish or other salt tolerant species.

The salt will not affect the beneficial filter bacteria but the higher dose rate (4 heaped tablespoons per 20 litres) will affect some plants and some snails. The lower dose rate will not affect plants, shrimp or snails.

After you use salt and the fish have recovered, you do a 10% water change each day for a week using only fresh water that has been dechlorinated. Then do a 20% water change each day for a week. Then you can do bigger water changes after that. This dilutes the salt out of the tank slowly so it doesn't harm the fish.

If you do water changes while using salt, you need to treat the new water with salt before adding it to the tank. This will keep the salt level stable in the tank and minimise stress on the fish.

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Aussie_Bristle said:

Your ammonia is to high hun, should be 0. You need to do bigger water changes to help get that ammonia down. How much salt are you adding with the refill and are you adding the prime into the water before you put into the tank?

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Salty&Onion said:

Bettas are not community fish no matter what. They do better in a tank on their own. Either get a 5 gallon tank with filter and a heater or give him away back to the store and get two more neon tetras as they are schooling fish and will easily get stressed, they might or might not show it, when in smaller numbers and they also are soft water fish. What is your pH, GH and KH? Platies are hardwater fish, just like any other livebearer. I'm sure thar our dear @Byron can confirm.

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Colin_T said:

yes it's fine to mix salt in with some bottled or dechlorinated tap water, mix it up and then pour it into the tank.

If you gravel clean the tank into a white bucket, you should be able to see any baby fish that get sucked out. Otherwise wait a few weeks until the fry are bigger and then gravel clean it.

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Halfpint said:

Thanks for the reply. When I did the water test 2 days ago the pH was 7.6 I don't have a test for the gh and kh. I have uploaded pics from Yorkshire Water on the water levels in my area if that helps. The tank has been running for around 9-10 months and I've never had a problem with any of the fish been ill apart from the betta getting ick a few weeks after adding him. I got all the fish from the same shop and they advised me that the betta would be ok with what I already had in. I'm looking at getting a bigger tank so I will leave him in this one on his own and transfer the others to the new one.

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