Velvet?

[anibis]

My platy is covered in a mostly green but some gold glitter-like substance, it's especially bad around her head. They appear to be tiny dots, just super close together to make it look like a sheen. There are no isolated specks, its either a cluster or nothing at all. She has a cloudy slime coat, eyes are brown, flashing off plants, clamped fins (unless I'm in front of the tank), mostly sits on the bottom, and rapid gilling. She had been eating flake food fine until a couple days ago. Now she tries to eat, but just spits it out. She'll still eat frozen shrimp though.

I have been treating with QuickCure for 11 days now, along with daily 30%-50% PWC's and gravel vacuuming. Some of the green around her head has disappeared. Also some of areas of the cloudy slime coat have cleared up.

My other two fish have no visible spots, but they do have rapid gilling (may be from QuickCure). My other platy was flashing off plants, but hasn't in a week or so.

Is this Velvet? Should I continue treating with QuickCure, switch to copper, or try something else like Paraguard? I have noticed an improvement in how she looks, however being in meds day after day seems to be taking its toll with all the fish. I'm not sure how well they'll do if I need to treat daily for a month. QuickCure does raise my pH, so I'm wondering if it would be better to only do PWC's every 3 days as the instructions say so the pH is more stable.

She has been like this for a couple months. I've read that velvet is a quick killer in some threads, but others who have fought it for months.

Here are some pics:

 

[twiddlemuffin]

I believe there is actually a variant of platies that look exactly like this ? I may be wrong, hopefully someone else will chime in.