Platy lie on the bottom of tank

[terrypin]

I have a communal tank and my platy are sitting at the bottom of the tank when I feed them they move. My molly and guppy are acting normal and my rummy nose are swimming up and down together as they should. My glowlight tetra are hiding in the plants and so are my neons. water testing fine temperature is 24-25c and I am seeing some hair algae developing which I have never had in the past. I just cant figure. I have just done a 25% water change then leave for an hour or two then will do same again. I have cleanied one filter and replaced sponges but not the media. will do the other filter after things have settled down. I am running an aquael ultramax 2000 and a fluval 306 on a 350L tank.

 

[Colin_T]

Pictures and video of the fish?

What are the ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, pH and GH levels in the tank?

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When you clean the filter, do not replace any of the materials/ media. Just wash them out in a bucket of tank water and re-use them.

If you have carbon or Ammogon/ Zeolite in the filter, remove that and replace it with a sponge.

 

[terrypin]

Hi and thanks for the reply. My nitrite is zero, my ammonia looks to be zero-0.25ppm normally zero though. ph is 7 nitrate comes out the tap between 40 and 60 ppm. these figures are fairly normal I have been using seachem flourish to help my new live plants could this be causing the algae problem. I have not seen any bodies or noticed any loses yet. Do you think there may be a parasite that has targeted the platies. They are waking up when I feed them just seem to be inactive the rest of the time. Mollies are super active as normal

 

[ClownLurch]

You shouldn’t really replace the sponges. You’ve almost certainly thrown away a lot of good bacteria by doing so. Washing em out in used tank water to get rid of any excess gunge and reusing them is really the way to go.

 

[Essjay]

I agree. Sponges are part of the media.

 

[terrypin]

Hi thanks for all the replies and advice. I have still got platy sitting on the bottom and all piled up in the corner at night. This is happening with the fry/juveniles I have in a net in the tank. Apart from this all my other fish are back behaving normally. I replaced the sponges in my fluval 306 because it was second hand when I got it and had the wrong sponges in it the bottom coarse ones I cleaned and kept. My ultramax 2000 I only washed everything in old tank water I did this last night when doing my second 25% water change in two days. The only thing I have done before this happened was I gave my fish some courgette which I had purchased from the supermarket this is the first time I have used the imported spanish stuff normally buy local. I boil for 5 minutes so should have removed any insecticides. I dont use carbon in my tank unless needed would you advise I add some to one of the filters to be sure there are no pollutants from the courgette. FYI loss of one adult platy overnight all fry OK.