Unhappy Platies

Hi everyone,

I guess this has been coming for a while and has been foreseen by many of you - but my fish are not happy.

Pedro has been scratching for a couple of days and doing sudden bursts of erratic swimming and this evening he went completely into hiding, which is very unlike him and he looks thin, even though they were fed yesterday (bearing in mind they are on light feeds due to my cr*p water quality) and is gasping. He is fin tucking too. I had a look in my Fishlopedia and his behaviour fits poisoning (most likely due to my cr*p water quality). What do I do??  Observe him and if he gets worse then take action if he does??  He still has the energy to chase the others but I guess he will, even if he is poorly (dying?).

Peppa is also causing me some concern as he is parading round the tank and attacking any of the other fish that dare to move. George is doing a very good impression of a bit of weed and he has been swimming with  his head up, which I understand is a sign of submission. Goldie is swimming in the same manner as George but is occasionally being brave enough to challenge Peppa.  Do I leave them to it and expect Peppa to get more aggressive as Pedro's fate is decided or do I take Peppa out completely?

The hierarchy I have watched develop is definitely Pedro as top fish, Peppa as second fish, Goldie as third fish and George at the bottom of the pile (I suspect because he is smallest?)

Incidentally, my ammonia had gone back up to 2ppm today. I had been doing twice daily water changes of about 10 litres a time until I got it down to below 0.25 then I went down to one water change per day, same amount of water. Yesterday I fed some Daphnia (freeze dried but soaked in tank water for a bit) instead of flake and they didn't seem to keen on it so I siphoned most of it out again today, could this have made the ammonia rise as I know it is a protein rich food which can affect the water. I did three water changes today of about 10 litres each and got the ammonia back down to 0.25. 

I'm very worried about them all and we are going away tomorrow for the weekend so I don't know what to do for the best. Part of me says let nature take it's course but part of me is eager to make things better for them.

Help!!

 

FC   

Glad to hear all's well FC! 

What a relief fishcake! All you can do is monitor your water and keep doing changes whenever your levels get too high.  Fingers crossed your chuckle will be a quick one and your fishies come through ok :-)

Excellent reply Sue.  Water changes seem to help in a lot of cases.  Have you ever fed garlic??  Ive had good results with ridding internal parasites on new members to my tanks.