Platy Help

[Lady L]

Hi

I'm a newbie to all this!

Currently have a 60 litre fluval tank, which is home to 6 neon's, 4 glowlights, 1 male guppy and 4 platy's and 1 x algae eater sucker fish (not sure what species!).

I noticed a few days ago that 2 of the platy's have white marks spread over their backs and sides. I researched this and it doesnt look like whitespot, and the white area is quite large as a pose to small white circles. The fish dont seem ill and have been eating as normal.

I've removed the 2 fish and placed in an isolated tank for the moment until the cause has been established..

All other fish look perfectly ok and have no marks on them at all.

Our tank has been running for 9 weeks, and we have gradually added the rest of the fish over the last 8 weeks. We lost 2 male guppy's last week - our ammonia levels peaked, but after regualr water changes, everything is now back to normal (got the water checked at our local fish shop yesterday).

Is this a disease or fungus?

Please help!
Leona

 

[Pleccy]

First of all may I assume you started to stock the tank with fish after one week? If so this is the problem. Before you can add fish to an aquarium, the filter needs to build up a population of friendly nitrosomonas bacteria which break down ammonia into less harmful substances known as nitrite and nitrate, the end product is nitrogen gas. This process is known as cycling. If you don't let your tank cycle first your tank will suffer from a problem called new tank syndrome (or NTS for short). This will expose your fish to lethal concentrations of ammonia and nitrite which will make them very ill and can even kill them in the space of a few hours, with no symptoms or signs of disease involved. I would suggest you remove all of the fish and allow the tank to cycle for a few weeks, after this you can stock slowly adding no more than four fish every two weeks. This will allow the filter to adapt to the increasing biological load produced by the fish.