FishProfiles.com Message Forums

About a week ago I noticed some yellowish patches on my orange platies and my other fish were acting very sluggish and sitting on the bottom of the tank. I treated with coppersafe because I thought it was either velvet or ich. Everything seemed good and in about half an hour all the fish were better. A couple of days went by and then it came back so I treated again. The past couple of days the fish are ok in the morning but by night time they seem to have the same symptoms. I'm rethinking that it is velvet...I can't see any visible symptoms on my 2 blue fish or the yellow one. Maybe its just a loss of color on the orange ones. Could this be some sort of internal parasite? I have noticed extra long feces hanging out of some of the fish over the past couple of days. I think the carbon in my filter might need changed...would that have any effect?

Temp: 80 (normally 77 but I turned it up)
pH: 8.6
ammonia: 0
nitrite: 0
nitrate: 10

Meds dont really work well when youre using carbon, it tends to take most of the meds out of the water. Try removing the carbon from the filter, then treating the velvet for a couple of weeks as the meds direct you , and then putting it back in to clean up the water after.

Thats why a) the velvet wasnt cured, and b) the filter was clogging. When you use meds , you use carbon to take em out of the water afterwards alongside water changes.You can always whack a sponge or some filter wool where the carbon usually is while the meds are in the tank, that way you get a little extra mechanical filtration without neutralising the meds.

The meds will cause some of the ultra fine porous surfaces on the carbon to clog and collapse, thats why you change carbon for new after removing meds , basically the meds will reduce the filtration ability of the carbon, and once the carbon has had meds in it there is a danger of a re-release of toxins.

For future ref , treatments go like this. Take carbon out, use meds, finish course of treatment, put in fresh carbon, use it for about a week,together with heavy water changes, then dump it and replace it with a fresh batch.Then things run as normal after that.