Fat fish

[Skyedriver]

Sons aquarium, platys & zebra danio
There is one danio & one platy with very distended stomachs, don't believe they are pregnant.
Greedy? The rest are fine.

On the subject of pregnancy
We bought two new platys in November
New years day we spotted ONE tiny young platy, identical to one of the new ones
One month later another single identical platy.
Both doing well.

[NotSoSuper]

if you have a male and female platy they give birth to babies every month generally a lot of them, luckily they are awful parents and eat most of the babies. anyway does the fish look swollen up and "like a pine cone?" when you look at it from above if so that sounds like dropsy which needs treatment asap.

[Skyedriver]

Swollen yes but not like a pine cone. I assume you mean open scales.
It's one platy out of (now) 5
and one danio out of 4
The others are totally unaffected.
These two have grown steadily over the last 6 months or more.
The danio is possibly the most agressive of the danios, chasing the others.
Wouldn't say the platy is agressive as they are all very passive but it is always the first for food.

Just had a read up on dropsy, they do have the swollen stomach and the danio has a bit of distortion of the horizontal stripes which could be a curving of the spine or just the belly stretching things.
They certainly not off their food, I've done a 33% water change every week, the ammonia, nitate and nitrite levels are all fine.

Temperature drop once a week when I do the water change. Drop a few weeks ago when we had a power cut but that was long after the two fish started showing these symptoms.

I honestly (but maybe nievely) think its greed. I could use a "treatment" but always reluctant to add chemicals to the tank.


I know a bit about platy births, I assume the fish that had the baby was pregnant when we got her but as all our fish were female she must have been storing the second brood up!

Thanks

Edited by Skyedriver on Tuesday 16th April 08:37

[lufbramatt]

cut down your feeding to once every other day for a week or so and give them a cooked, deshelled pea. Should clear out any bloating if that's the issue. with tropicals it's better to slightly under feed than over feed.

Your water changes sound good. How big is the tank?

try to match the temperature of the new water when you do changes, sudden temperature shock can stress the fish which makes them vulnerable to illness. I use 30 litre beer making bucketa (food grade plastic so safe for fish use) and stick a kettle or two full of hot water in each one to bring the temperature up a bit.

Edited by lufbramatt on Tuesday 16th April 21:17

Edited by lufbramatt on Tuesday 16th April 21:18

[Skyedriver]

lufbramatt said:

cut down your feeding to once every other day for a week or so and give them a cooked, deshelled pea. Should clear out any bloating if that's the issue. with tropicals it's better to slightly under feed than over feed.

Your water changes sound good. How big is the tank?

try to match the temperature of the new water when you do changes, sudden temperature shock can stress the fish which makes them vulnerable to illness. I use 30 litre beer making bucketa (food grade plastic so safe for fish use) and stick a kettle or two full of hot water in each one to bring the temperature up a bit.

Edited by lufbramatt on Tuesday 16th April 21:17

Edited by lufbramatt on Tuesday 16th April 21:18

Watched them again tonight, defo seems they get to the food first
I know it's common to overfeed and I guess we do, bit worried that the others arn't getting enough.
They do tend to nibble the plants too.
Usually fill a bucket with clean tap water, add the correct amount of treatment, then leave it overnight under the tank to try and bring it to room temp, but obviously not tank temp.