possible fin rot and one dead

[peaceablegarden]

Hello,
I posted yesterday about water quality problems and a couple of sick fish. One died overnight. Today the fin on my other platy definitely looks ragged. There was initially a thick, white line near the base.

I realized by the end of the thread that I had to somehow tackle the ammonia in my tap water (duh on my part) and had an ah ha moment. So I tested the water in my gravity filter and found no ammonia. I immediately did a pwc. The level is ever so slightly lower this morning. My gravity fed filter system can only do about 2 gal at a time so I now have 2 gal and 2 more on the way. I'll also start partial changes on my TANK 2.

I've also added more salt to the tank (only the amount recommended). There was only about 50% of the recommended amount already in the tank.

My question is, if I have fin rot, how should I treat it?

Here's a link to the threads from yesterday that have all my water tests, specifics about the tank, and a photo of the fish in question.

THANKS!

 

[peaceablegarden]

Sorry, here's the link:
http://www.aquariumadvice.com/forums/f17/bad-water-and-not-well-fish-106128.html

 

[happygirl65]

Can you tell us how long your tank has been set up? If your bio filter is not completely established yet, I would say go ahead and treat with a medication. If your tank has fully cycled then I would try to quarantine all infected fish and treat them the one tank. I have had success with fin rot usingmaracyn and maracyn two in compbination for 10 days and lots of water changes....probably about 50% daily right before adding the new dose of meds each day. I have no idea how it would effect your fry...maybe someone else can chime in on that.

 

[peaceablegarden]

The tank with the fish in question has been up for a little more than a month and is just about cycled. All levels have zero'd out except ammonia which is finally slowly coming down. I have no means to isolate the fish unfortunately.

 

[happygirl65]

OK, well in that case you will need to treat the whole tank. It can damage your biofilter so you will likely have to cycle all over again once it is complete.

Sometimes these things happen. Stress can compromise their health and let opportunistic infections set it. Keep on top of the water changes and the meds and your fish should recover nicely.

 

[peaceablegarden]

Well now I'm really baffled. I've been doing pwc's 10-20% (with filtered ammonia free water) on both my tanks since realizing my tap water has ammonia and I can't get it down at all. Thought it was going down, but alas, no. The suspected finrot on one of my platies seems to be going away on its own with pwc's which was one reason I thought water quality was improving. I've tested via my Master API and keep getting the same readings every day. TANK 1 1ppm and TANK2 .25-.50. Any suggestions?

 

[peaceablegarden]

Forgot to mention that yesterday TANK 1 got two pwc's.

 

[happygirl65]

It is pretty normal to see illness going away with increased water changes. The clean water really helps their immune system battle whatever the ailment is.

I think that it might take a while for your parameters to get to zero as your biofilter will need to catch up. Even though you have switched to cleaner water, you just might not have enough beneficial bacteria to eat up all the ammonia produced by the fish just yet. What you are seeing is pretty normal and all part of the cycle.

Sometimes using a conditioner like prime will help make the ammonia non toxic in small amounts. But I think you are on the right track with lots of water changes. And just keeping an eye on things.

Eventually you will see your levels drop to zero and everything will stabilize and then you can back it off to weekly and then every two weeks on your water changes.

Another thing that can help right now is to feed every other day, and make sure that you only feed what they can consume within 5 minutes. Decaying food will also increase your ammonia reading.