New Parent (Me)/Are Platy Babies Safe in Salted Tank?

[Thomas]

Hi everyone.

I am in a bit of a pickle today. I only have 1 tank at home (20 gal) with 1 juvenile Ryukin and 5 Glassfish. Yesterday, I went out and bought 5 Dwarf Red Platies. At the store, they looked perfect. I didn't see any fungus, fin tear, or discoloration. I don't have a quarantine tank, so I just added them in after a 30 min acclimation. After adding them, I noticed that one of them had ich. The damage was done, so I went and added salt to the tank at a ratio of 1 Tbsp per 2 gal water. I also used API PimaFix and am currently on day 2. This morning, I checked again and noticed that the initial Platy does not have ich anymore, but the 4 other ones do (only the Platies have ich at the moment). I got scared and scooped them out into a cup. I then noticed that one was giving birth. So I scooped the other 4 out, then scooped out the mother when she was done. I then put a mesh breeder box in the main tank, and poured the babies. Will the salt and meds in the main tank hurt the babies? I assumed that it was safe to add in the babies because ich is an external parasite, not an internal one. I also don't have food for them. I only have Hikari Goldfish Gold, some tetra flakes, and some cubes of freeze-dried brine shrimp. It must've mated while at the shop, because I don't have any males, and was unfortunately not prepared for this. Can someone help me out please? I would like to also apologize if I am posting in the wrong section. It was either this section or the fish diseases one. Thank you for your time and I hope you have a wonderful day.

- Thomas

[Kirsten]

Yeah, that'll happen! 🙂 Female platies can hold on to sperm for weeks for several successive broods. Safe to assume that every female platy is pregnant at all times, basically!

Platies will be fine with salt, more so than many other fish. I can't promise that the babies will survive the ich meds, which you'll have to do for the entire tank for a full 2 weeks to ensure it's truly wiped out.

But the good thing about platies is that they're almost always having babies. So there'll probably be a lot more where that came from!

Don't worry about feeding them specially, just crumble up the flakes a bit more than usual. I wouldn't bother with holding them in a breeder box, either, assuming you have lots of plants for them to hide in. They'll probably be able to chase down more microbia and algae to eat if they can swim around.

[Colu]

Pimafix will have no effect on ich  I would treat with ich x or API super ich cure