Dying fish! Bacterial Gill Disease?

About 5 days ago, I added 3 fancy guppies and 2 Otto's to my 20 Gallon tank that holds 6 platies.

Everything was seemingly fine until 2 days ago when one of my platy fish was sitting on the bottom of the tank. He seemed to have trouble with his buoyancy and when he tried to swim, he would spin like he was in outer space. He died a few hours later.

The next day, a guppy was gasping at the top of the tank and died soon after I noticed. Later that day, another platy sat on the bottom of the tank breathing heavily and died the next morning.

Yesterday, I noticed that one of the Platies had red gills. My readings are all 0 according to my API liquid tests. I do have a high PH of about 8.4 but have had that since I started my tank 3 months ago.

I treated the whole tank with Erythromycin as instructed by my LFS. Do you think this is bacterial gill disease? Will this medicine help? Are there lasting effects after I contain the disease? What else can I do? HELP PLEASE!

 

I also bought a Tetra whisper 20 and airstone and it seems to be helping but obviously it will not fix my problem. Since medication, I've had no deaths but the fish still seem to be a little sluggish looking and will hang at the bottom more than normal.

 

HI Joel, welcome to the forum!

Is your tank heavily planted? It's very odd for you not to have a nitrate reading. When you mention red gills and labored breathing, a few things come to mind, the first is ammonia poisoning, but since your ammo level is 0, then I would assume gil flukes or the start or ich. Any other symptoms? I'm wondering if the treatment you used wiped out your cycle.

 

Thank you for the response! I actually ended up losing 3 fish and an Otto . I treated with Erthromycin and also put in air stone and I've had no deaths in the last 4 days. I still have no idea what the cause was. I'm nervous that now that the treatment is done, that it will start killing them off again.

The fish that died had no physical signs on their bodies that I could see. One of my fish (who is sort of see through) has pinkish gills. Another fish has what looks like a growth coming from the pectoral fins but I don't remember if it's always been like that or not. Any help would be appreciated diagnosing the disease!

 

Forgot to write that I don't have plants in my tank. Ammonia has been 0 the whole time. I have not seen any other signs of ICH. The fish have no white spots on their body. The picture of my reddish colored platy has white but that's how he has always looked. He's very unique looking.

So does this sound like gill flukes?