Do I just give up at this point

[foxgirl158]

I’ve reached a breaking point. I’ve lost so many fish in the past year. I was down to 5 platies, an adult and four fry. Everyone seemed to be getting along great in my newly redone 30g. They were getting fed bug bites every day to every three days. A couple days ago, they went two days without eating. I then noticed nibble marks on a fry tail, so I made sure to feed them every day. Today I found that fry dead with its tail and fins missing. I’ve lost SO MANY stupid fish, I just don’t know if it’s worth keeping up the hobby anymore. A lot of them got eaten, some had bad breeding, some had parasites, some I just don’t know. There’s just so many of them that I lost I just don’t know if I can do it anymore.

 

[AdoraBelle Dearheart]

Sending cyber hugs, if wanted!
I think many of us have been there after going through a rough time like that, and have contemplated shutting it all down. Sounds as though you've had it rough for a really long while too, and that will grind anyone down. Please don't be too hard on yourself. I don't know you super well, but have seen more than enough to know that you're passionate about providing the best care you can, and you love the hobby. It's just getting to you because losses are very hard and it feels hopeless right now.

But, I think the fact you came to us - other fish nerds, to ask whether you should give up, tells me that you don't want to give up! And I don't think you should either.

I don't know the issues you've been facing or the reasons around all of the losses. But I'd bet there isn't a fishkeeper who hasn't made a mistake that's proved fatal to at least one fish, so even if you have made mistakes, which we all do, that doesn't mean you should give up either. You just resolve to learn from that mistake.

From my own experience when I began with random store guppies and kept losing them, and doing battle with parasites, I learned from others here and elsewhere that sometimes, you get poorly bred, mass farmed, worm infested fish from many stores, especially livebearers. That's not your fault, and even the most perfect environment/food/care isn't necessarily going to turn those fish into healthy fish. The worms need meds, but they also have to be the right meds with the right ingredients to kill them off, since some off-shelf random wormers don't work at all, or don't treat the particular worms yours are carrying. Since they can carry a worm burden for a long time without showing obvious signs until they suddenly get skinny, listless and die, you can be fighting fish losses without figuring out the underlying cause for a long time.

But sometimes, you just have poorly produced unhealthy fish, and the best you can do is try to get some fry from them before they keel over, and usually the fry are more hardy than the parents. That's what a hobbyist told me when my latest trio of pet shop mutt guppies keeled over one by one, despite my trying to provide the perfect tank, water, live plants, food etc for them. Once I did manage to get some slightly healthier stock, worm them properly and get some fry from them, I found that to be true, the fry did wind up being healthier and more long lived than their parents had been. Given you mentioned worms and having platies, I'm wondering if you've been going through a similar thing?
My suggestion would be to take a break for a while, and really think about what fish you'd like to keep. Do you still want to try with livebearers? A community tank? Is your water hard or soft? Do you want a planted tank, or a river like biotope? Want to build a paludarium? What project/tank/fish would really excite you?
This could be an option to reset and plan something you'll really love, and plan how to do it so you don't go through the same thing again. One step for me, which I took when battling camallanus worms was to clean all my fish equipment in a bleach solution so I wouldn't accidentally re-infect the fish with worm eggs while the tanks went through the rounds of medication to wipe out round and flatworms, then sticking to a strict quarantine period, worming any new fish while in quarantine, especially so for livebearers given how common it is for them to have worms. Lost a lot of fish to those worms, but getting strict with the treatment did solve it.

And you know that we're here and would want to help and support you! You never have to be afraid to ask.

 

[Fishmanic]

What are you water test readings? Also we need to know water hardness level.

 

[outofwater]

If the hobby stops being something that brings you joy, then a break might be needed. Not everything goes your way all the time, but like everything else in life, sometimes we go thru cycles that need to end and maybe restart later on.

 

[CaptainBarnicles]

Poor you chick a lot of us have been where you are right now and it really sucks. My hubby has lost count of the amount of times I've torn tanks down and put them away for a year to drag them back out and start again. Sometimes things just happen that we can't control etc or we make stupid mistakes that compromises everything...we just dust ourselves off and start again. Maybe a little break is what you need to just shake off the negative vibes and find something to inspire and excite you again your love for fish will always be there and you can come back to it any time

 

[Grizleyguy]

Here's my 2 cents. Get (low priced) convict cichlids or Honduran red points. Seems to be the only super resilient fish that I have come across in my years of fish keeping. Stick to two fish no matter what water perimeters or tank size. But that doesn't mean avoiding water tests and partial water changes. Good luck.

 

[foxgirl158]

What are you water test readings? Also we need to know water hardness level.

I know for a fact this particular fry in my original post got eaten. She was being nipped at and part of her tail was missing before I found her dead. My water parameters as of last reading were:

Ammonia: 0ppm
Nitrite: 0ppm
Nitrate: 10ppm
pH: 7.4

My water is quite hard, I'm not sure of the actual readings itself because our water company is very small and I can't find the website/readings for our tap water. However if I let it build up too long I will get hard water deposits quite frequently on the top and sides of my filter and tank.

 

[foxgirl158]

Here's my 2 cents. Get (low priced) convict cichlids or Honduran red points. Seems to be the only super resilient fish that I have come across in my years of fish keeping. Stick to two fish no matter what water perimeters or tank size. But that doesn't mean avoiding water tests and partial water changes. Good luck.

I am definitely not experienced enough for cichlids

 

[foxgirl158]

Thank you all for your kind words and advice they're very much appreciated. In a while, once I am allowed to, I would like to try putting a betta in my planted 10 gallon. I've kept only platties for such a long time now, I think maybe another type of fish will do me good. Also once I figure out the issues in my main tank I want to turn it into a proper community tank, with a pleco, maybe a gourami of some kind, and a type of schooling fish. I have plans but the problem is my parents will not allow me to pursue them right now and I'm stuck in a holding pattern until they say yes which is also rather demoralizing. I will do my best to keep these last four platy alive as they all have names and I'm rather attached to them, I just am having trouble.

 

[AdoraBelle Dearheart]

I know for a fact this particular fry in my original post got eaten. She was being nipped at and part of her tail was missing before I found her dead.

I'm sorry hon, but I have to disagree with you there. It's easy to misinterpret fish behaviour when it comes to this sort of thing.
Platies don't tend to try to eat each other that way. They'll swallow a tiny newborn fry whole, yes, but they don't try to eat each other by taking chunks out of each other. They're not an aggressive fish like that, fish can easily last without feeding for weeks, and two or three days without food is no where near close to starving and resorting to murder..!

It's likely that she either got a bacterial infection in her fins or sustained damage some other way to the fin, weakening her, and may well have had another underlying problem, like worms. Once a fish is weakened and sickly, other fish often bully it mercilessly. This seems horrible to us, but remember that in the wild, a sickly, weak fish is a shining beacon for predators. The other fish instinctively don't want to be around a fish that is going to draw predators to them, so they try to drive the sickly fish away; nipping at it and bullying it. But they're not in a river where that one can escape, hide, and perhaps recover from their sickness/injury. They're trapped in a glass box together, so it can quickly escalate to more damage and stress to the already weak and vulnerable fish.

This is another reason we often use quarantine tanks for sickly fish, not only because they can spread whatever illness they may have. I've sometimes used a breeder box to isolate a sickly or dying fish in a community tank if another tank wasn't free, just to prevent the other fish from terrorising them and eating the body, which would increase the chances that they'd pick up whatever health problem the dead fish had.
Any omnivorous fish will also eat the dead body of another fish, so finding the other fish eating the body doesn't mean they caused the death in order to eat her, you know?
Any chance you could get some photos of the remaining platies? We have livebearer authorities here, @emeraldking and @GaryE who might be able to spot any potential problems, or give advice to help make sure your remaining fish survive. If I've got anything wrong above, I'm always open to being corrected! It's just from what I've read and observed with my own community tanks and livebearers.

 

[foxgirl158]

Platies don't tend to try to eat each other that way. They'll swallow a tiny newborn fry whole, yes, but they don't try to eat each other by taking chunks out of each other. They're not an aggressive fish like that, fish can easily last without feeding for weeks, and two or three days without food is no where near close to starving and resorting to murder..!

Really! This is the way a lot of my other fry died. I was assuming the others weren’t getting enough nutrients and eating each other! Same symptoms, their tails would come to a point and they would start getting thin and weak, then they would die. I thought the other fry were attacking them and eating their tails, which resulted in them dying!

 

[AdoraBelle Dearheart]

Really! This is the way a lot of my other fry died. I was assuming the others weren’t getting enough nutrients and eating each other! Same symptoms, their tails would come to a point and they would start getting thin and weak, then they would die. I thought the other fry were attacking them and eating their tails, which resulted in them dying!

Not eating each other because they're starving, there's something else going on underneath all this. Their tails would come to a point?
You've heard of fish fin clamping when they're stressed, right? Sounds like your fry had pin tail, it's like, fin clamping taken to the extreme, where the fish is seriously ill and can't hide it anymore. It's a bad sign once fish are so unwell/stressed that their tail is pinned like that. Usually means some underlying disease is going on, like worms, or really poor water quality, and you tested the water without showing a problem there. When I've seen pintail in my guppy fry, it was because the worm burden had become too much for them, so they rapidly lost weight and pintailed a day or so before dying. The other fish are just eating the bodies.

Gonna tag @Colin_T into this as well since it sounds pretty bad, and I don't want this to drive you out of the hobby, @foxgirl158 ! So enlisting all the help we can get, and Colin is the dude for disease.

@foxgirl158 are you able to upload photos of the remaining fish please?
Do any of the fish ever do a stringy white poop?
You said you dealt with worms before - how did you know they had worms, and what product did you use to treat it?

 

[Alice B]

I bleached my hex tank and restarted it in summer 2019. In June 2020 I took all the nice tanks down, moved my living guppies, clown pleco, albino bristle nose, and my plants I dipped in bleach water and dechlorinator first to the hex and my old ugly 29.

I bleached everything else. sold a 55 and a 20. Comes a time when so many different diseases had built up, and one was incurable ich type, and I'd just had it. I am very happy to have healthy fish now, Including my old guppies and some offspring and my male and female bristlenose and my clown pleco. I didn't buy a fish until this spring, late spring, almost 2 years... and I quarantined all the ones I got in a brand new 29, I also changed to a new (old) pet store to buy them. The one that never sold me a sick fish.

 

[WhistlingBadger]

It's hard when everything goes wrong. There's a lot of learning in this hobby, and sometimes you get things wrong and fish die. (Occasionally you do everything right and fish die anyway) We've all been there. If it isn't fun anymore, take a break. The hobby will still be here when you decide you're ready to come back.

 

[foxgirl158]

Not eating each other because they're starving, there's something else going on underneath all this. Their tails would come to a point?
You've heard of fish fin clamping when they're stressed, right? Sounds like your fry had pin tail, it's like, fin clamping taken to the extreme, where the fish is seriously ill and can't hide it anymore. It's a bad sign once fish are so unwell/stressed that their tail is pinned like that. Usually means some underlying disease is going on, like worms, or really poor water quality, and you tested the water without showing a problem there. When I've seen pintail in my guppy fry, it was because the worm burden had become too much for them, so they rapidly lost weight and pintailed a day or so before dying. The other fish are just eating the bodies.

Gonna tag @Colin_T into this as well since it sounds pretty bad, and I don't want this to drive you out of the hobby, @foxgirl158 ! So enlisting all the help we can get, and Colin is the dude for disease.

@foxgirl158 are you able to upload photos of the remaining fish please?
Do any of the fish ever do a stringy white poop?
You said you dealt with worms before - how did you know they had worms, and what product did you use to treat it?

Here is a link to a post I made with some info about what worms I thought I had and what I was using. I’ll try to get pictures of the fish tomorrow, as it’s late and I should be asleep.