Female sunburst platy clamped fins.

So today I noticed my female sunburst platy has clamped fins. Everyone else in the tank is perfectly healthy and acting completely normal. She just gave her first birth ever recently, could she be experiencing complications from having her first birth? Please don't ask me to test my water as I can't, testing kits are expensive. My water has always been fine as it is piped from lake Michigan, no groundwater here.

 

Well, generally the first step to helping a fish recover is testing the parameters to be sure nothing is wrong you aren't aware of, followed by frequent water changes to keep conditions as clean as possible for the stressed fish. I don't keep livebearers so I'm not sure what is normal behaviour after giving birth but clamped fins can indicate discomfort so that seems reasonable.

I will ask you to get a test kit, reason being, its hard for other members to recommend things without parameters and with no test kit its hard to know what's going on in your tank so you can tailor maintenance routines to it such as, frequency and amount of pwcs. Here is a couple links to good prices on the apI kit for $20 or under:

 

I wonder if there's a correlation between this and my peppered cory acting extremely skittish lately. I'll do a small pwc today and see if things improve.

 

Hey, you know I turned down my tank temperature recently, maybe that has something to do with it?

 

How long ago was that and are you at 76 f now? As long as you did it slowly (like a degree or two every couple hours) and if you did it a couple days ago I would think she'd be used to it by now. Really, a parameter check is in order, especially if other fish are acting strange.

 

How long ago was that and are you at 76 f now? As long as you did it slowly (like a degree or two every couple hours) and if you did it a couple days ago I would think she'd be used to it by now. Really, a parameter check is in order, especially if other fish are acting strange.

I'm just going to do a water change and see if things improve.

 

Alright, did a 25 percent water change and poop cleanup as well. Lets see if things improve.