Sick platy

[KrombopulosAndy]

Hi all, I'm having trouble with a new female platy I brought home 10 days ago. She's currently quarantined in a 32 litre tank with another platy bought from the same tank and a 10 day old platy fry that was born in our community tank (Moved due to an aggressive angel fish).

The sick platy is spitting up all food, hiding and has very long stringy poo. On first seeing these signs I treated the tank with Flubendazole as I initially thought it was worms. I started this treatment 4 days ago, 6 days after she was brought home and she is not improving.

Parameters:
PH: 7.6
Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 0

Bit weird as I did have nitrates in there previously but I'm guessing the medicine is messing with the tests.

 

[libertybelle]

I’m not sure why medicine would mess with a nitrate year; but if you have live plants they might have sucked up your nitrates. Just keep testing to ensure the meds haven’t messed with your cycle.

Test regularly because as you likely know clean water is the most basic medicine. Nothing else will help much if their stressed by a meds induced mini cycle or something.

When you say not improving do you mean not eating, white stringy poop, lethargic, poor color?

 

[KrombopulosAndy]

No live plants so I'm quite confused about it, I'm keeping an eye on it, did a quick ammonia test on my break and it's gone up little bit, although still less than .25ppm.

Unfortunately the platy is only getting worse, extremely lethargic now and mostly staying at the bottom of the tank, completely ignoring food and I haven't seen her poop for 24 hours. Colour hasn't changed much although at a push I'd say she's more pale and she's also breathing much faster.

I doubt she has long left so as a last ditch I performed a 50% water change and ran carbon for about 16 hours before dosing with some dimetridazole. I'm based in the UK, so more potent options like API general cure aren't available to me.

 

[KrombopulosAndy]

Sadly the platy died this morning, nothing obviously wrong with her on closer inspection. Performed a water change and added carbon back in to soak up the meds. Glad I quarantined them and I'm hoping it won't pass onto the other platy or fry so will keep them quarantined for at least a couple more weeks.