The Mystery of the Platy...

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pistolpete3521

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Mar 16, 2008
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Indian Trail, NC
If you don't know me, check out my "introduce yourself" thread.

So I have a one and ten gallon, I haven't killed anything in the 10 gallon yet, but... About October or Novembr of last fall, I bought 5 spastic little sunburst dwarf platys to go in my one gallon by themselves. Problem: around two weeks ago, I cleaned the tank and filled it past the fill line, one week ago I noticed I only had 4 platys. Then, i searched everywhere to see if it hadflopped out of the tank and it hadn't. I cleaned the tank this week and took all of the precautions I usually do.... remove fish, put into water from tank... remove everythign, rinse rocks, replace air stone becauseit looked about 100 yrs old, rinsed rocks, scrubbed decrepid steriotypical lighthouse in my tank, replaced everything, filled, let sit until temp was equal,spoonedsmallamountsof water from each "tank" so the Ph was equal. placed container in water and allowed original water to difuse slowly into new water and vice versa.... and probably some stuff im forgetting.

So I go in there that night after drivers ed and 3 more are dead.... 1 remaining. the next morning, h/she is dead too.

Theory: the original one i cannot find died of sickness, others ate it and one heldon longer than the rest...

feedback plz :( no more caffeine, bed time. I hope you guys can help me in the morning.

Thank You

P.S. I will probably never have platys again and am I bad at this ?? because these are the only things I have "killed"
 
you have to many fish in a tank that is too small, you need about a 10g for that number of plates with a 15g being more optimal. you also killed off any biofilter(the bacteria) you had when you scrubbed out the entire tank and rinsed it with, i'm assuming, raw tap water.
 
Never never clean gravel and such. its got your good bacteria in it. just suck out the much when you do water changes. and never empty all the water out. you killed the fish by several things. you destroyed the biological in the tank by cleaning gravel, you most likely do not have a filter system on this 1 gallon tank. and you put to many fish in it. 1 gallon tanks are not good for anything but a few shrimp!
go back, read about over stocking, cycling tanks and try to remember that there is tons of info here on how to care for, feed clean tanks and so much more . fish need good homes. I have 4 very small platy in my 10 gallon and they will be re homed soon in the 29 gallon tank when they grow more. never would I ever put more then 4 platy in a 10 gallon tank. fish need room to play, grow and live a good life. if your going to put them in a jar why have them?
did the gallon container have heat? filtration ? lighting? these are basic needs for afish to grow healthy and happy.
welcome to Aquaria central, I do hope we can help you maintain a better tank with happier fish :)
 
I mean these thigns were really tiny though nd they never even spread out... they were maybe 1\4 to 1\2 inch long and i know about cycling. I think the main problem was not tenough bacteria, i just rinsed the gravel though, i didn't "clean" it so idk. Plus, can someone explain the missing fish ?
 
pistolpete3521 said:
I mean these thigns were really tiny though nd they never even spread out... they were maybe 1\4 to 1\2 inch long and i know about cycling. I think the main problem was not tenough bacteria, i just rinsed the gravel though, i didn't "clean" it so idk. Plus, can someone explain the missing fish ?
Click to expand...

As far as the missing fish goes, it could have easily been picked at/eaten away by the other fish. I'm sure it wouldn't take much to consume a fish thats maybe half an inch long.

Now, back to the whole cycling thing. As "grannylvsfish" said, you shouldn't wash your gravel totally. Rinsing, cleaning, basically the same thing right? If you rinsed the gravel under tap water POOF there goes anything good that might have been on the gravel. The chlorine in the water would have killed off the good bacteria. If you MUST rinse your gravel do it with dechlorinated water, preferably from the tank the gravel came from. You're right when you say the main problem was not enough bacteria. Long story short...5 platies in a 1 gallon would cause the ammonia levels (bad for fish) to go shooting way up, especially since nothing was in there before the platies. The ammonia could have been the death factor but...Then your nitrItes(really not good for fish) would go really high too because they would be trying so hard to bring down the levels of the ammonia. The nitrItes could have and most likely killed the fish BUT... then NitrAtes would show up and be trying really hard to bring down the high nitrItes which also could have killed the fish. Basically with a tank that small you should be doing water changes every day until the tank has cycled and levels are stable:) Wow, that was a mouthful haha.

Oh and by the way...maybe I have just never seen "Dwarf Platys" before but were they really dwarfs or were they just babies?? Hope this helped a bit.
 
they probably just decayed in the tank... putting ammonia up killing more fish
 
At my LFS (that explains it) it said dwarf and i wouldn't doubt it because I had 'em for about 6 mo.'s and they never really grew. they went from happy to one just diappearing.

I think when I get my 20 gal. long, I am probably going to do a fishless cycle and get the lelvels right and then do a half water change b4 planting it. Thanks for the feedback.
 
pistolpete3521 said:
At my LFS (that explains it) it said dwarf and i wouldn't doubt it because I had 'em for about 6 mo.'s and they never really grew. they went from happy to one just diappearing.

I think when I get my 20 gal. long, I am probably going to do a fishless cycle and get the lelvels right and then do a half water change b4 planting it. Thanks for the feedback.
Click to expand...

Yes, that sounds like a good plan. Get a bigger tank for all your fish but do make sure you cycle it first. They will be much happier with more room to swim. As far as the dwarf platies not growing, it could have been because the levels were high and not very good, obviously causing poor conditions to grow in. Plus, if you weren't do any or very little water changes, that would contribute to no growing either. Anyway, I hope you sort of have your problem solved :)
 
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