Platy

[tinkerbell_stars_1987]

all of my livebearers apart from one has died in the past few weeks
so now i have one female platy in a tank with a plec and 2 corys will she be ok in with just them or will she get lonely? should i get a few more platies and mollies? or wud that be a bad idea (because of the mollies needing salt in the water? maybe thats why 3 of them died) and help much appreciated!

 

[LauraFrog]

Platys do like to have other platys in the tank, but they aren't schooling fish. So while they might be a bit happier and more active if there are a few of them, it's not cruel to keep them alone the way it's cruel to keep tetras, barbs, corys etc. without the company of their own kind.

Personally I'd be working out why so many fish died before considering getting new ones. How big is the tank, what did you have in it and how long had it been set up? Do you have water parameters (ammonia/nitrite/nitrate/temp/pH) and also what did the fish do before they died? We might be able to work out why you keep losing them.

Not all mollies need salt in the water. The domestic molly is a hybrid of several wild molly species. Some of them are fine with hard fresh water, others require salt. So whether a particular batch of pet store mollies will thrive without salt or not, largely depends on which species they've got in their genetic makeup, and it's often extremely hard to tell. As a general rule, sailfins (male has large dorsal fin) are brackish and hard to keep. Forms where the male has a small dorsal fin (slightly, or not at all, bigger than the female's) are generally freshwater. The 'black molly' - the really dark, velvety, fairly small one - thrives in hard, fresh water provided you keep it warm.

 

[OldMan47]

The first thing you need to do is figure out why you are losing livebearers Tinkerbell. Livebearers don't just die off with no reason. Most will live many years if given the proper conditions. There is the distinct possibility that your water is too soft for your livebearers since cories and a plec are thriving in the same tank. Cories and plecs do well in soft water but a good healthy environment for most livebearers is high in total dissolved solids which will test high in hardness. With high TDS and a high pH, most common livebearers, including any of the common mollies, will thrive. The hard water is less than ideal for a plec or cories but I have both plecs and cories that are doing fine in my hard water. Other possible problems for the livebearers would be people's tendencies to feed their fish on nothing but frozen foods and high protein content foods while mollies and platies do better with a significant vegetable content in their diets.
The most obvious thing that will kill off fish is, as LauraFrog said, an uncycled or incompletely cycled tank. The only reason that was not my first choice is that most cories will succumb faster than a platy to nitrite or ammonia poisoning. It would help us rule out some of the possibilities if you could give us how long the tank has been set up, how long it has had fish in it and what you do as regular maintenance on the tank. If you have a liquid type test kit, it would also help to know what the pH, ammonia, nitrite and nitrate readings are on the tank's water.

 

[tinkerbell_stars_1987]

hi i dont have any of the tests left im afraid but i shall pop down the shops and get some to find out the tank was set up and left for 2 weeks (put in cycle and safe guard that i got with the tank) then i got 1 dalmation molly and 3 platies which i left for 2 weeks and they all were fine then i got a plec and 2 more mollies and they were fine then i got 2 platies n 2 cories and 2 of my platies died they had a red coulour on there bodies and one had a sort of dent in his head so i treat the tank for finrot but i think i was too late but after that the rest were fine i left everyone for 2 weeks and then i got a clown loach he was good for a week but when i did the water change he got white spot and i moved a tubby looking molly to the hospital tank because she was just at the bottom of the tank looked like she had trouble breathing she died 4 days later then everyone seemed fine and happy (the loach still had white spot which i cntinued to treat ) then i woke up one morning my 2 male platies were on the bottom same symptoms i went to the lfs for help they never really knew wot was up they said to do another tank change ( didnt want to becasue i know loach's are a bit sensitive to tank changes) but when i got back they had both died after this i immediately set up my smaller fish tank with the cycle and water safeguard then on the night while i was at work my clown loach died then the next night when i was at work my other 2 mollies died its been the most upsetting time for me i must say many tears have been shed i listened to advice off my dad but when he cleaned the filter all the dirt which had been collecting in the filter for a month spilt out into the tank ( stingray filter) this seems to be when i started having the unexplainable deaths my old tank had been cleaned out and is not set up xx

 

[OldMan47]

A read through of your tank's history leads me to speculate that you never properly cycled the tank. After that the rapid changes and population shifts have prevented a stable biological filter from becoming established. If I am reading things right, you were relying on the Cycle to protect the fish from being in an uncycled tank and it let you down. The water would have been a terrible soup when you did the water change at about 5 weeks from initial setup and the sudden change in water quality will have caused some deaths. After that you were convinced by something you have read to limit the water changes on your loaches which means that you did not clear out the water. When all the dirt from your filter spilled into the tank, any organic matter in that material started to decay in the tank water which would have given a fresh spike in ammonia production, much like adding some fish would do. My best guess is that when you do finally test your water you will find that you have somewhat elevated nitrites in the water.
Removing fish to another tank to treat for ich is a poor thing to do. Because the ich parasite exists wherever you see any symptoms it means that it is a matter of a short time before the other fish will show symptoms too. It is easier to treat the ich in a single tank than in multiple tanks. Do not add any fish right now to any tank. Instead do a large water change on your tank followed by a textbook treatment for ich. There is a link in my signature area that goes to a thorough writeup on the ich disease itself and that gives instruction on how to treat for it. My best guess is the ich arrived with the loach based on your time line, but that it was only a few minor spots on that fish when you bought it. If you need to do any water changes during the ich treatment, be sure to immediately dose the tank back up on the ich treatment because any time the water is not actively being treated is time the ich may use to become re-established on the fish themselves. During the treatment you will be relying on killing the free swimming form of the parasite and waiting for all of the cysts on the fish to rupture and spill their contents. There are no treatments that can actually remove the ich parasite from a fish so you treat the disease by killing the free swimming stage before it can become attached to the fish. That is one reason that all ich treatments will tell you to continue treating for several days after the last sign of the parasite is gone from the fish.

 

[tinkerbell_stars_1987]

ahrite well this is what i shall do then thank you very much. the annoying thing is i took the water to the lfs and he said it was perfect i did it everytime i got fish but i suppose they say wotever just to get you to make a purchase iv now been told that clown loached dont go well with some of the fish i had in i dont know if this is true tho. next time i think il stick to the knowledge i find out on here thank you x

 

[OldMan47]

Water might well be fine right before you add fish but right after the bacteria colony would not be big enough to take care of the added fish. Unless they know all about the tank and its history, it is hard for them to judge what is OK. That is the same reason that we asked for the information here before giving any advice.

 

[tinkerbell_stars_1987]

thanks very much for the advice also when i moved the living fish to my other smaller tank when we completely cleaned out the old tank (fishless of course) the filter didnt seem to be dirty at all (3 weeks after water change) is this unusual? any advice on how to set up my big tank again the water is in the filter and heater are on and my air curtain is set up and iv put some tap safe in anyway i can try and prevent a problem with this one? thanks

 

[OldMan47]

I am guessing that Tap Safe is a brand name of dechlorinator so you definitely would want to use it. A filter takes time to build up its layer of dirt but 3 weeks seems a long time for the filter to still look clean. Can you feel any water flow when you place your hand next to the filter? I would check to make sure the water is flowing through the filter on that tank. If the flow is bypassing the filter element, that could be part of the problems you saw right after it was cleaned.

If you have a tank set up with a partly cycled filter you need to decide whether to try to treat the ich in the temporary tank or move the fish back to the partly cycled tank. If you find that the filter flow was not going through the filter, it may be that the filter is further along in its development than we thought. I hope you have taken the time to read through the article on ich that I referred you to since it contains more thorough advice than the instructions on most medications that you would buy for treating ich. The basic approach to ich treatment is to raise the temperature higher than you might otherwise want to do and apply an appropriate medication to kill the ich parasite. The temperature is raised to speed up the life cycle of the parasite so that it will be exposed to the medication more quickly and the tank can become free of the parasite sooner. Don't forget to dose the medication back up if you find a water change necessary during the ich treatment.

 

[tinkerbell_stars_1987]

back again ive just read the article and it helped alot thanks as i checked my medicine and it doesnt have one of the ingredients which is recommended (formalin) i think i want to put my big tank through a fishless cycle and leave my 4 in the little tank and carry on treating for ick iv checked my filter it seems to be working fine . so do u think i shud use a salt bath or get some new medicine with the correct ingredients? i have 2 corydors and have been told they dont like salt in the tank? also do u think me doing a fishless cycle is the right way to go? thank you sorru 4 all the questions i just want my 4 little guys to survive there all looking great btw

 

[OldMan47]

I have used the salt method each time I treated for ich but there were no cories in my tank so I am unsure about them. I used to think mollies needed salt and kept some corydoras trilineatus in a salted tank with my mollies without troubles. That tank was not as hot as you will need to go to be effective though. Make sure you take care of the oxygenation, high water temperatures always mean low oxygen concentrations.

 

[tinkerbell_stars_1987]

ahrite ok im not sure how much salt i will need my small tank is only a 40 litre the temp of my water is at 26-27 does it need to be higher?

 

[OldMan47]

As it said in the article I sent you to, the temperature will need to be about 29 or 30C for the optimum treatment. That article also spells out exactly how much salt to use in a salt treatment. I look it up each time I do it so I don't have the number in my memory.

 

[tinkerbell_stars_1987]

yeh just re-read it lol im not sure wot mine is in gallons il have to work it out

 

[OldMan47]

About 3.8 litres per gallon. Once you know the conversion it is simple arithmetic.