Platy with Silver???

[whitepinehokie]

I have a platy which is exhibiting some strange behavior. She has clamped fins and labored breathing. I put her in a quarantine tank for a bit, just to keep an eye on her and she seemed to improve (flared fins, etc). She was in the quarantine tank for 2 weeks. I put her back in my main tank last night and when I came home from work, she seems much worse. She now also seems to have silver patches over her gills. Another female platy also seems to have the same silver patches, almost exclusively over the gills. I added this platy about a month ago, with 2 others.

My temperature is 78.8 and holding steady.

Any thoughts? I can't find anything about this. I thought it might be velvet, but that mentions specifically gold patches and these are silver. They're not cottony or fuzzy like a fungus either, so I am completely baffled.

[whitepinehokie]

Well, crap, he's dead. I am so frustrated with my tank. I finally got it to look the way I wanted to and now I only have 3 fish.

I don't know what I'm doing wrong!!! I've had the tank for 6 months now, it's fully cycled. The temperature doesn't fluctuate more than 0.02 usually. I do a 50% water change and rinse the filter media (in aquarium water) every week. I feed the fish a varied diet (Hikari Micro Pellets, Hikari algae wafers, frozen peas - deshelled and softened, shrimp pellets). I haven't put anything in the tank besides zebra danios (gone), neon tetras (gone), cory cats (gone) and platys (3 live).

None of the fish die in big bunches or anything, but they one by one go to the great aquarium in the sky.

I don't want to dismantle my tank, because I do love it. I'm about to set up a betta tank in my home office (I've had them before).

Is it me? Is it the platys? I'm so frustrated I could scream...

[cellodaisy]

I'm sorry for your losses.

Did all the fish show the same symptoms before dying? Are you using a good water conditioner? Do you have your actual water parameters from a good liquid test kit? Did you get all the fish from the same source?

[7itanium]

just an FYI... rinsing filter media in aquarium water is a good way to clean it and doesnt kill all your bacteria... but every two weeks is a bit much on that-- its not needed and can rinse off a lot of bacteria even tho it doesnt kill the whole colony

not saying thats the reason this happened.. but just my 2 cents on that.

sorry for your loss-- hopefully you get things under control