Why Does My Platy Have A Red Belly?

Here's Kai..handsome little thing isn't he? The water/ornaments look a bit weird still as stained from the white spot meds but the levels are all still at nil so I'm leaving well alone until I do a water change on Sunday. Do you think I should do a big change or just 25%? I've left the charcoal filter out and am going to the pet shop on Saturdays so will buy some filter sponge as recommended.

Glad she's not pregnant - don't need maternity scares on top of everything else this week 

Hey Susie, that's a good lookin' Betta you've got there.

I see Resa has lost non of her eloquence, she always has the most apposite and beautifully structured responce. 

Kai is gorgeous! I really want a betta hmmm

Yes, they will.

It will save you from having a very overpopulated tank. A lot of people try to save every single fry, but by the time you've given the first few away you'll run out of recipients, and because they are so cheap from the wholesaler not many shops will take them off you even for free.
And don't forget that every female fry you save will start having lots of babies as soon as they are old enough.

With whitespot you have to treat the whole tank as there will be some parasites in stages 2 and 3 as well as stage 1 on the fish.

But whitespot doesn't usually have red ulcer-like lesions. There are other things that cause flicking - anything that is making the fish's skin itch, so everything from ammonia in the water to parasites/skin infections, to just having an itch. It's continual flicking that indicates something wrong, the odd once or twice is nothing to worry about.
As for the red ulcer, I don't know as it's not some thing my fish have had. Google suggest a bacterial or viral skin infection. The best treatment for bacterial infections are Myxazin by Waterlife and eSHa 2000. There is nothing to treat viruses. Since you don't have a quarantine tank, you'll need to leave the fish in the biorb and treat it there. The problem with a bowl is the lack of filter to keep the water clean. Ammonia build up can make a skin infection worse by irritating it.

Aquarium salt is not needed in freshwater tanks full time, though it can be used to help with certain diseases. It is actually just plain old sodium chloride, table salt, in expensive packaging. It is another hang over from days gone by; they didn't know why it worked to keep their fish healthy but we now know that it mitigated the effect of nitrite. Back then they didn't have proper filters so there was ammonia and nitrite in their tanks.
Having said that, platies are able to tolerate some salt. But the best thing to do is stop adding it and water changes will slowly remove it. Slowly being the word; big changes in anything are bad for fish. This doesn't mean big water changes are necessarily bad as if they are done regularly the water in the tank tank doesn't have time to change much from tapwater, it's when water changes are infrequent or when chemicals are added (like salt) that makes tank water different from tapwater.

When you say you've been adding the correct dose of salt, how have you been adding it? The correct way is to add enough for the whole tank at the beginning (though adding a small amount over a few days rather than all at once is better) then at each water change add enough to replace the amount in the water you just took out. So a 10% water change, add 10% of the full dose.


I'm afraid I can't help on the heater question as I've never had a biorb.

Hi both. Thanks, will stop adding aquarium salt unless I get another outbreak of white spot or anything. Kai's tank too I suppose? (I did wonder why I was adding it when he's a freshwater fish really) Don't worry Sue, I was only adding the relevant amount to the amount of water I was addingsto the tank, not calculating 60 ltres worth each time.

Puffin - I hadn't looked into a different heater as everything else about the biorb is so flippin' exclusive (you can only use their substrate/filters/lights etc but I will ask on Saturday.

The fish all look fine tonight - except that the one who had the red 'spot' is being hassled by one of the gold platies. I wonder if she's a female and the red marking is something to do with her being ready to mate or something? He's sort of flicking up against her face and won't leave her alone. What with red belly still stalking the others and now this I guess I should have bought all females. (All of this is assumption because I still can't tell for sure what sex they all are)

Just looked on eBay, typically for them... You can buy a Biorb heater kit for £14.99 plus p&p or £819.95 depending on which seller you choose!
But I'm sure I saw somewhere that you can just use any make, it certainly looks like a normal heater in the pictures. The biorb one is only 50W so a bit small for your 60l.

Et viola!

Phew!....that's a relief...I thought for a moment we were gonna get some sort of fish porn...or at the very least, platies with censored bits