White shedding on platy?

[Birdcop]

Okay, this is my first big tank and my first sick fish. Let me know if I'm missing any information!

I have a 6 month old 28 gal bowfront tank, moderatly planted. It has 2 Platies, 5 Rasbora Het, 4 White Clouds, 6 neon green Rasbora, 1 dwarf honey Gourami, 5 kuhli loaches, 3 amano shrimp, and 2 siamese alage eaters (the very smallest I could find). I have a 30gal Hagen Fluvel filter with an additional filter piece on the intake, and a heater that remains at 74 degrees.

current water - <10 nitrate .5 nitrite 300 hardness 0 chlorine 80 alkalinity 6.8 ph.

other then the nitrite, all typical numbers for my tank. It has driftwood and crushed shells, as well as wondershells. I just did a water change (30%) where I removed a couple of plants the day before yesterday. (11/19)

As of now, I have one Platy in a 2.5 gal isolation tank. 1 suddenly dead siamese alage eater, and a missing neon green rasbora (very small, possibly also dead among the plants) I had treated the isolated Platy with marine salt and melafix, thinking it was finrot after the platy showed some symptoms, but now that I found the alage eater, I'm not so sure if I'm treating what I thought I was!

Here's current what I see:

Siamese alage eater- deceased, I found him floating at the bottom of the tank ( I have two that look alike, I didn't notice him missing) I don't see anything wrong with him. He has no holes in his fins, no fuzzy white around his face, gills aren't red, no white spots.

Platy - First fish I noticed. He hid for an entire day yesterday. I noticed once he started coming out again, that he only stayed near the bottom of the tank and hid. He has something white and flaky on his face. Definitely on his forehead, possibly on/around mouth. His gills seem pinker then usual. He has a torn tail fin and white spots on his tail. I also noticed now that he has a red spot above his left eye that I don't think was there before.

Green neon Rasbora - currently missing. Other rasboras seem active and healthy at this time.

Any ideas on how to continue to treat this? Should I treat the large tank with salt? Will it affect my loaches? ( I understand they're sensitive to medicines) Here's photos of the platy. Sorry about the bubbles, they haven't settled yet

Edit: Sorry about the title, I didn't realize I hadn't finished it

 

[Birdcop]

I also thought of some other information that may be useful:

I had a reticulated hillstream loach in my tank too, but I have not seen it in over a month.

I've been having some problems with my amazon swords, anubis and aponogeton plants having transparent leaves. I haven't found the cause of this either.

I took photos of the deceased siamese algae eater and noticed he had some sort of yellow lump on the very top of his head. I don't know that that's normal for them, they move around so much that I never got a really good look at them (newest additions to tank. About a month). I bought them to take care of black hair algae (which they have).

The platy seems the same today. I'm going to do a 100% water change in his iso tank and remedicate the water tomorrow.

 

[ppo8820]

Well lets start with you have way too many fish in that tank. Because you are so overstocked, your water conditions will suffer. When looking at the platy, I cant quite tell if its ich or fin rot. I am going to lean more towards fin rot if you are sure nothing else in your tank is nipping him. If that is the case, you have some water quality issues. You will need to do a large water change asap. Test your water for ammonia, nitrites, and nitrates. Ammonia needs to be at 0, Nitrites at 0, and Nitrates between 5-10ppm ideally.

What are the testing water parameters in the already cycled 28 gallon?

 

[ppo8820]

It could be ich. Id skip the salt with the loaches and just up the tank temp to 86 degrees and hold it there for 10-12 days, no less. It will disable the ich's reproduction cycle and they will die off without the use of meds. It works like a charm. The red can be caused by ammonia which is why I asked what your water test showed.

 

[Birdcop]

Those are the water parameters of my cycled tank.

The hospital tank is - 6.8 ph (my tap is acidic) 40 alkainity, 0 chlorine, 150 hardness, under 20 ppm nitrate, .5 nitrite. This is the water I just did a 100% water change with.

My test kit doesn't include ammonia, but I can get some that do today. I haven't had any problems with nitrite or nitrates since my original cycle of the tank.

Do I need to raise the temperature gradually?

 

[Birdcop]

Update:

The Platy has lost another 1/4 of it's tail, alone in it's isolation tank. So I'm ruling out injury (unless it's injuring it'self. ). Although I am accepting of the idea that this could have also stemmed from injury if my male platys were fighting (which I've never seen them do, but apparently they will) that allowed an infection in.

Anyways, I've continued the salt regiment in the hospital tank. I'm not seeing improvement yet, but I found out I was dosing with too little ( mixed up tsp and tbsp ). The fish in the main tank are doing well with the temperature increase. No other fish are showing symptoms as of now anyways. My LFS was out of ammonia tests today but I'll get some asap. Did a water change to be safe, 50%.

According to LFS, when I showed them my dead Siamese algae eater, they believed he had starved. Whether he wasn't competing well with the other fish, or he was sick, or if I wasn't feeding enough, I'm not sure. But I'm feeding the tank more, and making sure to feed something different every day (I was a little lazy with the pellets for a week or so). I feed frozen bloodworms, micro pellets, and new era tropical pellets (bigger pellets). I was feeding every other day, but I'm feeding daily now.

I , sadly, cannot increase the temperature in the isolation tank for the platy, since the heater I bought for it was very cheap and doesn't include settings. I have been making the water I make water changes with though a bit warmer and acclimating the platy to it each time, it cools off through the day though.

Thank you for you advice!

 

[Birdcop]

Also:

I don't know what happened to one of my previous fish photos, it just changed to something else.

I am planning on taking one of my male platies back to the fish store after this, to prevent any further fighting. I think I may take some others back as well. Would upgrading my filter help? it's only a 30gal right now but I could upgrade it to a 60-70 gal filter. Or would higher be better?

currently:

Main tank - 0 nitrate, 0 nitrite, 300 hardness, 0 chlorine, 40 alkalinity, 6.2-6.8 ph

Isolation tank - 0 nitrate, 0 nitrite, 150-200 hardness, 0 chlorine, 40 alkalinity, 6.8 ph