Poor Platie

Question
    Hello, my sister just got 4 platies, 2 male sunset,1 female sunset, and one unknown male. 1 died today and she got REALLY sad. She also has barbs and a golden algea eater. The temp. is 80 degrees. The bodie looked fine, no injuries and it ate fine. Can you tell us what happened?

Answer
Good evening Camille, thank you for your question.

You'll need to tell me a little more about your sister's tank for me to be able to answer your question.

Sometimes a fish will die suddenly after being just put into a tank, usually because it failed to acclimate to the new environment. To prevent this from happening, your sister should be floating the bag with the new fish in the water for about 15 minutes. When she gets ready to put the fish in, she should pour the contents of the bag into a bowl or mug with a net spread out across it. Then she should turn the net inside out into the aquarium. The 15 minute wait allows the temperature to become the same in the bag as it is in the aquarium. Also, it is always best to avoid pouring  the shipping water from the store into the aquarium.

On the other hand, if your sister's tank is new, say, a week old or even two weeks, then the problem is that it hasn't finished cycling yet. Beneficial bacteria grow on the surfaces of her aquarium (especially the filter media and gravel) and help break down wastes. Ammonia breaks down into nitrite, and nitrite into nitrate, with the help of this bacteria. A water test kit keeps track of these levels.

In a healthy, cycled tank, ammonia and nitrite are always at 0 ppm. Any detectable levels are toxic, so she should check right away if there are any of these two levels present in her tank. Nitrates should be kept below 20 ppm at all times. If she doesn't have a test kit, the fish store can test her water, but her having own kit would be much in her favor.

Tell your sister to have a look around http://freshaquarium.about.com - there is lots of information on starting up an aquarium if she is new to fishkeeping. There are articles that help diagnose and treat common fish diseases, as well. About.com is our parent site, so this service is brought to you by them!

Good luck to both of you, and feel free to write again. If you do, however, please include the tank size and filtration as well as tankmates and temperature. Thank you so much!

Nicole