Sick platy. help please

[joec]

My platy has been staying near the top of the water by my floating plants. It's got a bit of tail fin damage and I noticed bubble looking things on the tail too. My ph went down to about 5.0 recently... no idea how, but I'm in the process of bringing it back up with more frequent large water changes.
http://img264.imageshack.us/img264/9391/cimg1100dg2.jpg

[blainep]

Hi joec

Lets see if we can help you out.

Are there any other tank mates in the tank ? Could your Platy be hiding ?

Is there enough oxygen ? The warm summer weather could be warming the tank, leaving less oxygen in the water.

Do you have another tank you can move her to ? If you do, it would be a good idea to move her and add a little aquarium salt to help heal the fin damage.

Any other information you can supply will help.

[Melody]

Reminds me of gas bubbles - how long has the tank been set up?

[joec]

I don't have a hospital tank. The tank has been running since beginning of April. Anyways, it died... I guess because of the ph. :(

[CACAdmin]

Sorry to hear you lost the platy. Keep a close eye on the other fish in the tank just in case something else was the cause.

[Melody]

I'm sorry to hear that. If the pH crashed, something was up. What size is the tank and how many / what kinds of fish are in there? How often do you do waterchanges? Any new fish added lately?

[happy_pitbull]

This article can help one understand why pH crashes.... has to do with buffering capacity of the tank. Even if this is not what happened with your particular tank, I still think this is something everyone should be aware of:

http://www.dras.ca/articles/article1ys.html



Min

[Tanya in Moncton NB]

I thought it might be gas bubble disease but when I look at the pic on this website it doesn't look the same. Click on photo to enlarge
http://badmanstropicalfish.com/disease.html
Here,s another article on gas bubble disease
http://www.petplace.com/fish/supersaturation/page1.aspx

The ph drop sounds like a buffer problem. You should have your gh and kh checked as well. You might need to add a few tbs of crushed coral in a filter (in a media bag) to help with the buffer and help with stabilizing the ph.

Ph has a tendency to drop over time, so if your water changes aren't often enough, it can drop. But it sounds like your doing lots of water changes...

When you do your large water changes, are you letting the water sit a bit or is it just straight from the tap? It looks like bubbles that are on the sides of your tank when the water hasn't had a chance to de-gas or it is filled too quickly.

[Melody]

That's exactly what I was thinking. I thought the tank might have just been set up. If you use a Python or similar waterchange system, you should also keep the hose/output above the waterline so gasses can disipate.

At that age I'd guess the pH crash may have been due to a seriously unbalanced system. Heavy loads, over-feeding, inadequate gravel vac's, etc, can crash a newish tank very quickly and no amount of buffering will save it. Buffering is great for low pH or fluctuating pH, but full crashes out of the blue usually mean something else is at work.

All guesswork of course, we could use more information. Hopefully things settle down soon.

[Melody]

I do some of my best thinking at 4AM...lol. Where do you hail from Joe? A LOT of places up the water treatment in Spring and Summer, which is done with gasses. Try doubling+ your water conditioner, and make sure it removes chlorine AND chloramines.

[joec]

I got yoyo loaches, barbs, swordtails, platys and guppies in the tank. About 30 fish in a planted 150g. No new fish for quite a while. From Richmond. I use buckets to refill and Prime as the conditioner. Usually do 20% weekly. I haven't cleaned or mixed/agitated the substrate thoroughly for a month. Just the top layer of it each week.
Been doing 75% water changes every day since I first posted, and the ph is almost back to normal. Yesterday, I noticed they have ich now, so I raised the temp to 30ºC. One of my fish was scratching it's gill on my driftwood and had a white spot.

[Melody]

They're definitly stressing about something - Ich is an opportunist and it needs weakend or stressed fish to really take hold. Don't raise the temp too much - it depletes oxygen.

Knowing what the pH needs work is great and its something to focus on immediately. Now we have to find the cause so we can address it.

Try a good, deep gravel vac - it can be surprising how much is trapped under there. You can do half the tank one week and the other half the next week if you're worried about cycling. If you find that a whole lot is coming out, do the whole thing as the lesser of two evils and let your filter carry the bacteria. Don't worry about your plants at this point either - a lot of stuff can get trapped amongst them and uprooting a few is the least of your worries. You can try a feeding ring so food isn't distributed into the plants. Do you have floating plants or moss? You need to shake them out in water quite often.

I'm sorry that you're going through all of this, but hang in there. The more you learn the better it will go. It certainly appears that you're ready to do what it takes. :smile: