Hey, just wondering if this has happened to anyone else. I have a small tank and I run bio-media only, the "batting" type. In the tank I have live plants, with a variatus platy and a small male gold dust molly. Every once in a while I remove a small amount of the batting and replace with fresh media, just to keep it from getting too icky and never having to do a large change of the media, to avoid disrupting my bacteria. The other day I added some more of my bio media in my filter and soon after my platy started seeming stressed. He was hiding in the plants with clamped fins. The next day he was completely hidden in the plants. It's weird though, my molly is acting fine. I did two 90% water changes with Prime and he continued acting stressed, but no signs of illness. Just seems stressed. Today I put a little bit of Prime in the tank in case my filter is disrupted and I am having an ammonia spike, but he didn't improve. I picked up some filter carbon and media bags and am running carbon in there, he seems to be doing a little better in that he is out in the open and his fins are no longer clamped but he is still swimming in place a bit. My molly continues to be fine.
I was wondering if maybe some hand soap could have gotten in on the bio media if maybe I didn't rinse my hands well enough, and the platy is more sensitive? I believe I washed my hands before putting the new bio media in. Hypothetically, could that cause this? And would the addition of carbon running in the filter remove any chemicals that may have gotten in from my hands? Has anyone else had something like this happen? I have had something similar happen before with fish acting stressed, and running carbon fixed it. I do have some erthromycin, could I use it as a sort of general antibiotic to treat the tank with if the platy continues having issues? Or should I maybe get some tetracycline? Or a "cure-all" like lifeguard all-in-one?
Sorry I don't have a test kit right now so I can't quote parameters.
I was wondering if maybe some hand soap could have gotten in on the bio media if maybe I didn't rinse my hands well enough, and the platy is more sensitive? I believe I washed my hands before putting the new bio media in. Hypothetically, could that cause this? And would the addition of carbon running in the filter remove any chemicals that may have gotten in from my hands? Has anyone else had something like this happen? I have had something similar happen before with fish acting stressed, and running carbon fixed it. I do have some erthromycin, could I use it as a sort of general antibiotic to treat the tank with if the platy continues having issues? Or should I maybe get some tetracycline? Or a "cure-all" like lifeguard all-in-one?
Sorry I don't have a test kit right now so I can't quote parameters.
