platy won't eat, listless...

[tomfleet]

I hope someone can help us, we're beginners. First a guppy and now a platy won't eat and seems to be fading day by day. Other than not eating, there's no sign of anything wrong. If it's some other sort of stress, we can't figure it out.

It's a 12-week old 13-gallon vertical tank, with 4 platys, 2 neons, 4 zebra danios, 2 coryadorises and till last week 2 guppies, now 1 guppy. 2 inches of gravel on bottom, a few plants; internal filter (TetraIN400); food is JBL flakes. Or rather, that's our setup now. It was all just awful at the start, we made all the mistakes, but since 4 weeks ago things seemed to stabilize. Even now the tanks a bit crowded maybe, but our surviving fish had gone through the worst and seemed fine. But from 2 weeks ago the female guppy stopped eating, it would just nibble and spit out immediately, and lurk in corners or at the bottom. Now one of the male platys is doing the same. The other fish, incl. the guppy, seem fine.

Water: We hadn't been checking water quality, but had changed 15-20% of the water once a week, using a siphon and replacement water that was left to sit for a couple of days (though can't rule out traces of chloramine?). Finally we got some testing kits yesterday: pH is 7.5-8.0, nitrite is <0.1 ppm. Don't have an ammonia tester. Anyway, vaguely we thought it'd be funny if the other platys and the remaining guppy were doing fine if it's a water quality problem--but that's probably wrong? It's possible temperature was erratic till last week because we had a crummy $10 heater that only seemed to turn on when you tapped it, but now we've got a nice Hydor set at 26 C. We can't spot any harrassment among the fish. Of the 4 platys, 2 incl. the sick one are male. The non-sick male looked like the sick one till maybe 2 weeks ago, but gets fatter and fatter and dwarfs the sick one now, but no sign of picking on the sick one. When the sick male does move around, you'd think it looked healthy, with fins erect, no ick or discolouration of any sort, yet it's as if it's doomed.

In another forum I saw a posting about a somewhat similar situation with a listless fish and no other sign of anything wrong, andsomeone suggested it might be an (incurable) parasite. We'd really appreciate any advice!

 

[Allivymar]

Hiya Tom and welcome to AquariumAdvice

Ok, lets see if we can figure a few things out. First thing is water parameters. Ammonia and nitrites are dangerous to fish as I believe you know. You really need to find out those levels of ammonia. Poor water parameters will affect and stress all fish, but it may only wind up causing disease in those who are weaker. Its quite possible levels of nitrogen combined with erratic water temps stressed the weaker fish enough to make them susceptible to disease. Also, you may want to pick up water treatment that removes chlorine and chloramine. I don't know if its added to the water in Korea, but if they are, it can also be affecting the fish (chloramine does not disappate like chlorine does without chemicals).

Next thing is the fish themselves. The sickly platy; is it normal otherwise except for the comparison to the other one? And the other one, you say he's fat; is he bloated? I'm almost wondering if the smaller one is the healthy one and the larger one is constipated or has dropsy...just thinking out loud mind you. What do you mean by "doomed"?

Its hard to determine what is causing the illness. Are there any other symptoms? Heavy breathing, any marks/raised areas/changes in color? Are any picking on the others? Whats the poo look like? White? Brown? Long strings of it? The more info you give us, the better chance we have of helping you figure out whats going on

 

[tomfleet]

Hi Allivymar and thanks very much for your reply. I see what you mean and will get the ammonia tester too and water treatment stuff. (My guess is chloramine is used in Seoul.) Now that you point it out, we think you're probably right that the platy was already weaker, and imperfections in the water/temperature have stressed it out. (The guppy that died had already seemed weaker, we recall, even before it stopped eating.) Are there any other water parameter tests you'd strongly recommend? (PS we were going to start adding CO2 for the plants, with a Tetra optimat, this week, but maybe we should put it off.)

The sick platy does look quite normal apart from hiding and not eating. We don't think the "fat" one is bloated exactly; it's gotten steadily rounder in the belly over the past maybe 3 weeks, but at feeding we see it just eats a whole lot, and is always pretty lively like the other non-sick platys. It doesn't look like pictures of dropsy we've seen, but maybe it is constipated though it still seems to eat lustily? The sick one seems doomed just in that it doesn't eat, like the guppy, and is getting steadily thinner, though not looking gaunt yet. Aside from not eating, and sort of hiding (and when it hides it looks limp, fins down, but when it does move out it looks fine), there aren't any other symptoms, marks, or color changes. Haven't looked at the poo (but the dead guppy's poo was pale and stringy all right).

Thanks very much again!

 

[Allivymar]

Hrmm. I'm wondering if it IS an intestinal parasite. Its starting to sound like it.

The active ingredient in most anti-parasite meds is metronidazole. Figure I should give you the actual term, as I don't know whats available in Korea. I'd look for meds which contain that. Tetra makes an anti-parasite food that contains it in case its still carried there.

 

[tomfleet]

Hi, well, our platy's looking no better tonite. I guess it could be a parasite as you say, so I'm going to look for the drug if there's no improvement in another couple days (we're finding there's a wide variety of aquarium products available in Seoul, along with a lot of aquarist websites). Two other potential problems: One is, I've just measured the kH value tonite, and its barely 2dH, and we're starting to fix that. I suspect the pH may have been very erratic too despite appearances. The other thing I didn't mention is maybe our fish are getting too MUCH light--the tank light goes off at 8:30 p.m. but the tank's in the living room and we're up till 1 a.m. most days.

Well, I suppose the basic problem is there are just too many things not quite right yet with our aquarium. Hope the platy pulls thru, we'll see. Thanks again,