Sick Platy

[pisces22]

Hey all,
On sunday I added 4 red platys to my 20g. Unfortunately while my dad was netting them out of the bag one fish leaped like a foot in the air and landed on the tile floor! I dropped on my knees and he flopped into my cupped hands (i was worried about handling him) and i put him in the tank. Later, after careful inspection I found all the fish to be free of ich, three were healthy,colourful and with well formed fins, but one, probably the jumper) seemed to have some scale damage. Ive carefully examined each fish everyday since then, they others are adujusting nicely but the one is off colour, constantly hiding, not eating and having trouble swimming-it seems his bottom fins are paralysed or damaged and he wont use them. He also attacks any fish that comes near him-and i noticed a white spot at the base of his tail-at first i thought it was ich but it looked kinda like a missing scale-anyway its faded or gone today, and so far no signs of ich any place on him or the others. Does anyone know what this mite be? is it contagious? im worried that hes suffering but im reluctant to "euthanize" him.
Thanks

 

[ChicoRaton]

well if he has enough "get up and go" to attack fish that come near him he'll probably be able to recover. I'd treat your tank with some Melafix. It's sort of like chicken soup for fish. It should help speed along the healing and prevent infection if you add it asap. Hope the little guy pulls through for ya. I had an african cichlid jump out of a tank and fall about 4 feet(5 if you count the distance he jumped above the tank) onto the carpet floor. I scooped him up and put him back in the water as fast as I could and he was fine.

 

[@LVIN]

IME, Fish takes some time to recover in such incidents. Just continue to monitor your water quality and make sure the other 3 platys don't harass the other.

 

[pisces22]

Surprisingly the other three fish are very peaceful and "kind" to the sickly one-its cute. The sickly platy will hide among the fake plants, sometimes rising 3 or so inches from the bottom but very rarely-he cant swim well without the use of his bottom fins and he has to jerk around-I feel really sorry for him. I dont think hes been eating because he never swims to the top for the flakes unless (hopefully) he could get at the odd fpiece of flake that sinks to the bottom. So far no signs of any ich on the fish-I just did a 30% water change and the water quality is good. i'l definetly try to get that Melafix stuff if you say it works-I found out too late about Cycle and Waste COntrol...
Thanks