skinny fish, with pineconeing?

Question

I have a 12 gallon tank with a bio-wheel filter system. I only have 2 female platys.  It's been set up for a couple of months but still hasn't cycled properly, the ammonia stays high, but the test strips show all other levels within range.  this could be because I had to put medicine in for three days about a month ago when one of them came down with flex.  I do 25 -35 % water changes about once a week.    All of a sudden one of them is very very skinny and has started to pine cone, she swims near the top a lot.  I haven't been able to find anything online about a skinny fish with pine coning.  Everything turns up with dropsy.  Please help if you can.  I just found out that my tap water has ammonia in it and have been adding  prime and just did a 100% water change and clean, which I'm sure didn't help the cycling but didn't know what else to do since the ammonia had spiked  to .6.  Thank you for you time.


Answer
Hi Lindsay;

That's very strange for a fish to have distended scales but be very thin. I don't recall ever seeing that. The only thing I can think of is that maybe they just can't lay flat against the contours of her bone structure. I wish I could help on this one but I just don't know.

Cleaning the tank out will cause the tank to go through the break-in period all over again. Just feed very lightly (two or three flakes per fish) and keep testing so you can detect ammonia and nitrite spikes and know when to change water. If the gravel was really dirty that was the cause of the ammonia going up. Hopefully it will get back on track very soon. Here is a link to my article on new tanks to help you through it in case you need more help on it;

http://www.xanga.com/Expert_Fish_Help

At Your Service;
Chris Robbins