platy swimming sideways, dying

[HelplessNewbie]

Can someone help diagnose the issue, so we can be vigilant about its tankmates possibly getting sick, too.

It had been a while since I looked closely at the teen's fish. Discovered 1 of 2 female platy  lying on bottom, struggling to swim and if it does, swimming sideways. Everyone else (including the other platy) seems okay.

In reviewing old security cam video, it was last seen healthy on Sep 2.

Tank details here. The sick platy, a blue coral, is nearly 1 year old and came from an online breeder. The other one is a blue wag and was obtained locally 100 days later.

Timeline:

Nov 2023 - moved from initial qt (along with 6 ricefish) to 20 long

Feb 26 - platy bloated and staying on bottom, difficulty swimming so moved to qt (no other fish with issues in the 20 long); treated for parasites with fenbendazole, praziquantel and metronidazole in water, and through medicated food (metro and prazi)

Apr 23 - platy moved from qt to teen's tank

Sep 2 - last seen in normal state

Sep 8 - rescued german blue ram added to teen's tank

Sep 20 - 15% water change and light gravel vac (no filters cleaned)

Sep 22 - platy dying; moved to a shallow planted qt by itself; added salt but no other meds for now... I don't know if it will make it

Photo below shows Sep 2 on left, and Sep 22 on right. Sorry for the bad pictures. The left one was through an inexpensive security camera and the right was through cellphone but that was as close as I could get without stressing it out even more.

Photo of the healthy blue wag (normal behavior and appetite😞

Edited 15 hours ago by HelplessNewbie

[HelplessNewbie]

Just in case, we did a 20% water change today.

Here are the ACO test strips.

GH has always been off the charts. It is like that in all our tanks and we are fine leaving it that way.

[Colu]

What I would do is add plain unsented epsom salt to it's quarantine tank 1 table spoon for 5 gallons for 5 days as epsom salt acts as a muscle relaxant to help relieve pressure on the swim bladder and do a course of maracyn2 or kanaplex just in cases there's a bacterial component @HelplessNewbie

[HelplessNewbie]

Thank you @Colu. I added epsom salt and maracyn 2. She is lying belly up. I hope she will hang on.

[Colu]

On 9/22/2024 at 11:03 PM, HelplessNewbie said:

Thank you @Colu. I added epsom salt and maracyn 2. She is lying belly up. I hope she will hang on.

How she doing any improvement