Platys Making A Mess Of My Tank!

[Tim N]

I pur 4 coral platys in my tank over the weekend. My tank now looks like it needs to be vacuumed every 2 or 3 days! Are they always this messy? I really want to replace them with a school of neon tetras!

 

[WILDER]

How big is the tank in litres, what substrate is it, as sand shows poo up and it looks unsightly, not really messy fish, but all fish have to go to the toilet, for neon tetra the tank has to be cyled, and they need a mature tank of 6 months.

 

[Annastasia]

Not usually. My first guess would be you are over-feeding them.

However....
What were your latest water stats?
The tank is cycled, correct? How long has it been set-up?
How much do you feed, what do you feed, and how often?
Just the Platies in the tank? Otherwise, what other fish?
And what size tank?

If you could answer those questions, it'd be most helpful.

 

[Tim N]

Ive been feeding them flake food once a day (to prevent overfeeding because the tank is relatively new, which I'll get to in a minute). Im pretty sure I dont overfeed, as all the food is gone in 30 to 45 seconds (i am underfeeding?). I have a 20 gallon tank (~75 liters) with smooth black gravel as a substrate. The 4 platys share it with 5 danios (which I used to cycle the tank)a pair of corys, and 2 ghost shrimp.

Water parameters:
The ammonia is trace (ie. <.25ppm. is this because I added some fish recently? they were zero last week), nitrites are zero and nitrates are ~20ppm (a little less actually). The numbers really make no sense, as the ammonia never really spiked when i was cycling it (or at least thought i was cycling) and the nitrates seem low. They stayed at .25ppm. This is my first fish tank, so I did a lot of reading and researching on aquariums- particularly on how to start a tank. I set it up 3 weeks from last friday. Is it possible that the tank never cycled, or is not fully cycled yet?

 

[Annastasia]

How did you cycle?

And what kind of cloudy is the water? What makes you think the tank needs to be cleaned very often?

 

[Tim N]

How did you cycle?

And what kind of cloudy is the water? What makes you think the tank needs to be cleaned very often?

I cycled it with 5 danios. The water isnt cloudy at all, the bottom is just filthy. The danios didnt poop that much at all.

 

[Annastasia]

Platies are big pooers...but I've never had the problem that the tank looks dirty, even with sand. Try gravel vaccuuming really deep, and get the whole tank. Sometimes lots of icky stuff will build up, then eventually become full and make it look really nasty.

 

[rich]

My platies pooed loads in the first few days, then they seemed to settle down once a lot of algae had been eaten. Unfortunately 1 died without warning in the second week, he developed some white spots over night which i have never seen on any of my fish before (or since)