six month old platy frys spitting out food

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rollann

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hi! i am stocking about 20 platy fry in a planted twenty gallon aquarium. the tank is cycled and the water quality is top notch. about a month ago, one of the fry developed collumanus worms, so i decided to treat the entire tank with levamisole from subquaria. i followed the instructions and did two full doses. from that point on, ALL the fish, including one new adult platy i added, spit out their food. they get excited and chase after food, but then spit it back out. i've tried bloodworms, daphina, and other foods, but they all spit it out. none have died from starvation or anything else yet, but im worried about their growth.

tank: 20 gallon high
filter: cycled internal filter
temp: 82 degrees
gh: 16 degrees
ammonia/nitrite/nitrate: 0 ppm
 
Did you do a water change 24 hours after treating the fish?

How much time elapsed between treatments?
To treat intestinal worms you need to treat the fish once a week for 3-4 weeks. You do a 75% water change and gravel clean 24-48 hours after treatment.

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Post pictures of the fish.

Wipe the inside of the glass down with a clean fish sponge.

Do a 75% water change and gravel clean the substrate every day for a week. The water changes and gravel cleaning will reduce the number of disease organisms in the water and provide a cleaner environment for the fish to recover in.
Make sure any new water is free of chlorine/ chloramine before it is added to the tank.

Clean the filter if it hasn't been done in the last 2 weeks. However, if the filter is less than 6 weeks old, do not clean it. Wash the filter materials/ media in a bucket of tank water and re-use them. Tip the bucket of dirty water on the garden/ lawn. Cleaning the filter means less gunk and cleaner water with fewer pathogens.

Increase surface turbulence/ aeration to maximise the dissolved oxygen in the water.

Add some salt, (see directions below).

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You can add rock salt (often sold as aquarium salt) or swimming pool salt to the aquarium at the dose rate of 1 heaped tablespoon per 20 litres of water. If there is no improvement after 48 hours you can double that dose rate so there is 2 heaped tablespoons of salt per 20 litres. If the fish are baby livebearers, use the lower dose of 1 heaped tablespoons per 20 litres.

If you only have livebearers (guppies, platies, swordtails, mollies), goldfish or rainbowfish in the tank you can double that dose rate, so you would add 2 heaped tablespoons per 20 litres and if there is no improvement after 48 hours, then increase it so there is a total of 4 heaped tablespoons of salt per 20 litres.

Keep the salt level like this for at least 2 weeks but no longer than 4 weeks otherwise kidney damage can occur. Kidney damage is more likely to occur in fish from soft water (tetras, Corydoras, angelfish, Bettas & gouramis, loaches) that are exposed to high levels of salt for an extended period of time, and is not an issue with livebearers, rainbowfish or other salt tolerant species.

The salt will not affect the beneficial filter bacteria but the higher dose rate (4 heaped tablespoons per 20 litres) will affect some plants and some snails. The lower dose rate (1-2 heaped tablespoons per 20 litres) will not affect fish, plants, shrimp or snails.

After you use salt and the fish have recovered, you do a 10% water change each day for a week using only fresh water that has been dechlorinated. Then do a 20% water change each day for a week. Then you can do bigger water changes after that. This dilutes the salt out of the tank slowly so it doesn't harm the fish.

When you do water changes while using salt, you need to treat the new water with salt before adding it to the tank. This will keep the salt level stable in the tank and minimise stress on the fish.
 
thanks for replying! yes, i followed those exact instructions. sorry, i was vague in the first post. after 24 hours of treatment, i did a 75% water change (vaccumming up any debris on the sand substrate), and repeated that every week for four weeks. they've recovered from those worms; they were eating healthy and gaining weight. i didn't see any worms from their anus for about one and a half months now. this seemed to be a separate infection. i've ran a full course of api erythromycin and api general cure, and they started to poop a lot. i've never seem them poop this much before. i've attached a picture of their poo and the tank, does it seem normal to you? it's not white and clear like a parasitic infection, but its not particularly brown either. (the water's a little murky because i did a water change with equilibrium.) thanks again!
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