Hello,
I have a 20 gallon tank with 2 platys (3 until today), many platy fry and 7 neon tetras. It's been up and running for ~4 months now. I cycled the tank before adding any fish and everything seemed to be going well until just over a month ago, when the tetras and the male platy started showing some signs of ich. No big deal, I bought some Coppersafe and they seem to be all better now.
The female platys, however, are not doing so well now. One of them gave birth in early July and was never quite the same after. She started hiding a lot, seemed lethargic and generally unhealthy, but there were no visible physical symptoms. The other female had babies about 6 weeks ago and started acting the same way, but to a lesser extent. They both just seemed really stressed and would hide away most of the time (one of them liked to get in between the the nursary for the fry and the glass).
Two weeks ago, one of the females stopped eating and had some kind of white, stringy fungus or something hanging from her gills. After a course of antibiotics, this went away, but she didn't seem to get any better. She still wouldn't eat and she seemed to develop some kind of swim bladder issue (she had great difficulty swimming downwards and seemed to just float towards the top). This just kept getting worse and worse until the last couple of days where she barely moved at all, she was just on her side near the top most of the time. She seemed to be suffering terribly, so I made the decision to euthanize her.
If this wasn't bad enough, my surviving female platy now seems to be having swim bladder problems as well, except she stays toward the bottom of the tank and has difficulty rising. I tried feeding her a pea, but she won't eat it.
I'm so frustrated and confused and I really don't want to lose another one. Any suggestions/help would be greatly appreciated.
As of yesterday, my stats are:
Temperature: 77ºF
pH: 6.8
Ammonia: 0ppm
Nitrite: 0ppm
Nitrate: 10ppm
Thanks.
I have a 20 gallon tank with 2 platys (3 until today), many platy fry and 7 neon tetras. It's been up and running for ~4 months now. I cycled the tank before adding any fish and everything seemed to be going well until just over a month ago, when the tetras and the male platy started showing some signs of ich. No big deal, I bought some Coppersafe and they seem to be all better now.
The female platys, however, are not doing so well now. One of them gave birth in early July and was never quite the same after. She started hiding a lot, seemed lethargic and generally unhealthy, but there were no visible physical symptoms. The other female had babies about 6 weeks ago and started acting the same way, but to a lesser extent. They both just seemed really stressed and would hide away most of the time (one of them liked to get in between the the nursary for the fry and the glass).
Two weeks ago, one of the females stopped eating and had some kind of white, stringy fungus or something hanging from her gills. After a course of antibiotics, this went away, but she didn't seem to get any better. She still wouldn't eat and she seemed to develop some kind of swim bladder issue (she had great difficulty swimming downwards and seemed to just float towards the top). This just kept getting worse and worse until the last couple of days where she barely moved at all, she was just on her side near the top most of the time. She seemed to be suffering terribly, so I made the decision to euthanize her.
If this wasn't bad enough, my surviving female platy now seems to be having swim bladder problems as well, except she stays toward the bottom of the tank and has difficulty rising. I tried feeding her a pea, but she won't eat it.
I'm so frustrated and confused and I really don't want to lose another one. Any suggestions/help would be greatly appreciated.
As of yesterday, my stats are:
Temperature: 77ºF
pH: 6.8
Ammonia: 0ppm
Nitrite: 0ppm
Nitrate: 10ppm
Thanks.
