my platy is sitting at the bottom of his tank and is cant really swim...?

Question

its a 3 week old 4 ft tank it has 8 plattys and a ship in it, i recently had a ph level of 4 and this morning when i saw the fish i thought he was dead cause he was sitting at the bottom on the tank not moving and kinda curved over, when i tried to pick him up he slowly sucked the rocks and moved away on his side. i kept him in there to see if he is just being silly and i notice his gills are a little pinkish, becuase he is at the bottom he is not eating and hasnt really moved all day except to move his eyes and fins, anything you can telll me would be great .

Answer 1

a 3 week old tank is not the best environment for fish it takes time for a tank to establish its own environment, with a 4ft tank it is recommended that u should set it up and not put any fish in for at least a month, in saying this i have never had too much of a problem with a fresh start to a tank but it is something to consider.
your ph is 4 which is acitic, platys prefer water to be slightly alkaline so adjust you water back to nuetral or slightly over to 8 or 9. however alkaline water is more prone to breeding fungal disease so u should goto your petshop and get a treatment for killing fungus,
platys are usually very hardy so if you adjust you water quality a little you fish should be fine, and may start breeding when the water quality is improved lots of fun to see FREE platys swimming around, but the parents will eat them so beware!
good luck
happy fishies!!!

Answer 2

Your pH appears to be very low. Does your water source have the same pH? Or perhaps you used something acidic to clean the tank (vinegar, lemon juice), or have a lot of bogwood or local stone with an acidic content that's leaching acids into your tank?

If your water source isn't that low of a pH, I'd look for what's caused the pH to decrease. If there are rocks or wood in your tank, I'd remove them and do a series of partial water changes to increase the pH to closer to that of your water source - above 5.0 would be a good start, but you want to get it into the 6.0+ range.

If your water source is 4.0 pH, You might try adding some crushed coral in a mesh bag to your filter. The water will dissolve the coral raising both the pH and the hardness, something your platties would like.

Another possibility is that the pH test was off - did you double check your results? Also, did you test for ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate in the tank?

Answer 3

its possible that he might have a fin fungus, or maybe even a scale fungus, either way i would try a anti-fungal medication