# Platy, All Dying!! please help!



## cell (Mar 9, 2009)

Tank description:
The tank is up and running for about a year and a half, Water parameters are ok; NO3=10mg/l,NH4=0,NO2=0, T=80F. They are only Platies in the tank, about 20, a lot of red cherry shrimps and 2 amano shrimp. I have a 20g planted tank.

Situation:
I lost 6 fishes yesterday and about 2 today. Shrimps are eating the dead fish before I can remove them! I can see fishes with bumps on their head, other has red irritation over their gills, other has some kind of rash on they sides, other has lost their colors (blue fish turned to white!)!!!!:Cry:

now what to do?:
I've set up a 5g hospital tank yesterday and I bought aquarium salt. What should I do? Treat the whole planted tank with salt? Or doing heavy water changes in the planted tank ?


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## Diana K (Dec 20, 2007)

For the fish to start dying all of a sudden suggests that something changed quickly.

Have you added any fish lately? Or anything else from a store that might have brought in a disease or parasite? Plants? Shrimp? Anything on a common filter with fish tanks can bring in disease and parasites from those other tanks.

Platies are cool water fish. I would lower the temperature about 1* per day until it is no higher than about 75*F.

Bumps, rashes, red gills, color loss... sounds like more than one thing going on.

Bumps:
Are these skin surface bumps like the fish were injured? 
Deeper in the fish like a tumor or swelling of some sort?
Are the bumps breaking open at all? How big are they? What color are they?

Rash: Might be from injury, but more likely infection of some sort.

Loss of color: Stress of any sort can do this, but there may also be some disease that can do this, too.

Red gills: Irritation, parasites, fungus, bacterial or other infection.

What I would do:

I would start with some large water changes. If there is a toxin or irritant in the water this will dilute it. If there are infectious agents in the water, not yet attached to the fish this will reduce the population. 
I would do a 50% water change morning and evening for a couple of days, and do as much of a gravel vac as you can without disturbing the plants.
Add activated carbon to the filter, too.

Platies are very tolerant of salt, so yes, I would add salt to this tank. Start with 1 teaspoon per 10 gallons. With each of the water changes increase the salt a bit until there might be as much as 1 tablespoon per 5 gallons, though this is too much for most plants. If you want to treat the Platies with this much salt you might do it in a quarantine tank.

Here is a site with a lot of fish disease and parasite info. Perhaps you should see if anything looks like what is going on in your tank:
http://www.nationalfishpharm.com/diseases.html


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## cell (Mar 9, 2009)

ok I'll give it a try.


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## neilshieh (Jun 24, 2010)

sounds like lots of parasites and toxins as diana mentioned. get some prazi pro to fix most parasite problems. do more water changes


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## Franco (Jun 25, 2010)

I have at least a teaspoon of salt per gallon in my planted tanks with no problems. Platys love salt and I have kept them in brackish tanks. I've noticed that people who don't use salt in molly or platy tanks tend to have a lot more external illnesses.
For hospital tanks I use 1 tablespoon of salt per gallon.
It doesn't have to be aquarium or sea salt either. I use kosher and pickling salt. Pickling salt is pure NaCl and has no anticaking agents in it. The anticaking agent in kosher salt doesn't cloud water for more than an hour though.


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