Deformed Platy

[elaine79]

I have recently put fish in my newly cycled tank, 2 fish died the first night and now 6 days later, 1 of my platys has become deformed, it has a curved spine and its fins are jagged, he/she is eating fine and is swimming about plenty and the rest of my fish seem fine. Does this sound like some kind of disease/parasite?

 

[Ny82]

Oh that's a shame, I have had female guppies, who are old and get curved spines after giving birth to fry constantly.  Other than that,  I don't know what causes curved spines. Are your water parameters all ok? Even though your tanks cycled, have you checked the water?

 

[elaine79]

yes, have checked it using liquid tests 
ammonia 0
nitrites 0
nitrates around 20
temp 79
ph 7.4
other fish seem fine so im very confused, wondering if the other fish have been bullying him as his fins look very raggy

 

[Ny82]

That's good you have the liquid test. Your water seems fine, the only thing that comes up when you look into curved spine in fish is TB. Do you have anywhere to separate him?
Apparently it's caused by stress. Did he just develop it? I will wait and see what others say.

 

[elaine79]

yes we have another tank which could be used so i think we will have to move him out of there but if its TB will my other fish be infected already? Someone said that its common for them to have a genetic defect due to inter breeding so hopefully its that rather than TB. We think we have seen one of the guppies attacking him a couple of times now so that could explain his raggy fins.  Poor little thing, such a sorry sight 

 

[Ny82]

yes we have another tank which could be used so i think we will have to move him out of there but if its TB will my other fish be infected already? Someone said that its common for them to have a genetic defect due to inter breeding so hopefully its that rather than TB. We think we have seen one of the guppies attacking him a couple of times now so that could explain his raggy fins.  Poor little thing, such a sorry sight 

 
I would move him, it's likely that the others may get infected. I have never experienced it other than my females getting old so I don't know about interbreeding. It's awful seeing them like that. When my female guppy gave birth, her spine just bent, she couldn't swim upright, she couldn't swim up to the food and the others started picking on her. It was a hard decision but I had to end her suffering

 

[elaine79]

Im guna move him tomorrow and see if he improves once he's away from the other fish. Thank you

 

[Ny82]

You're welcome, keep us updated!

 

[the_lock_man]

I'm just a little concerned that you put fish in the tank, 2 died straight away, and a 3rd has developed a deformity.
 
How did you cycle the tank? How many fish did you put in? What size tank is it?

 

[elaine79]

Hi, the tank is 175 litre. We did a fishless cycle by adding ammonia to keep it at 4ppm, we did that until we had a nitrite spike and the ammonia and nitrites were dropping to 0 within a 12 hour period. We done a water change to get the nitrates down to an acceptable level, let the tank settle for 24 hours then added the following fish: 4 guppies, 3 balloon mollies, 4 platys and 4 albino corys.

 

[elaine79]

The platy has now died. Also a couple of the others have white poo and earlier there was some poo floating in the tank with what looked like quite a large egg attached to it?