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Dalmation Mollie

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Irene Johnston

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Nov 28, 2018
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For the past three or four days my mollie has been very lethargic and has been lying on the substrate and hiding behind the plants. I have just noticed that he is not using his right pectoral fin. He does become active at feeding time and when the female mollie nudges him, then he hides himself away again. Any ideas what could be wrong?
 
Hi and welcome to the forum :)

Most fish health issues are caused by poor water quality that encourage bacteria and protozoans to flourish and infect the fish.

How long has the tank been set up for?
How often do you do water changes and how much water do you change?
Do you gravel clean the substrate when you do a water change?

Have you checked the water quality for ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, pH?
If yes, what were the results in numbers?

Do you know what the general hardness (GH) is?
Mollies require water with lots of minerals and a GH above 250ppm.

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Try doing a 75% water change and gravel clean the substrate each day for a week. Make sure any new water is free of chlorine/ chloramine before it is added to the tank.

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You can add rock salt (often sold as aquarium salt), sea salt or swimming pool salt to the aquarium at the dose rate of 1 heaped tablespoon per 20 litres of water. If there is no improvement after 48 hours you can double that dose rate so there is 2 heaped tablespoons of salt per 20 litres.

If you only have livebearers (guppies, platies, swordtails, mollies), goldfish or rainbowfish in the tank you can double that dose rate, so you would add 2 heaped tablespoons per 20 litres and if there is no improvement after 48 hours, then increase it so there is a total of 4 heaped tablespoons of salt per 20 litres.

Keep the salt level like this for at least 2 weeks but no longer than 4 weeks otherwise kidney damage can occur. Kidney damage is more likely to occur in fish from soft water (tetras, Corydoras, angelfish, gouramis, loaches) that are exposed to high levels of salt for an extended period of time, and is not an issue with livebearers, rainbowfish or other salt tolerant species.

The salt will not affect the beneficial filter bacteria but the higher dose rate will affect some plants. The lower dose rate will not affect plants.

After you use salt and the fish have recovered, you do a 10% water change each day for a week. Then do a 20% water change each day for a week. Then you can do bigger water changes after that.
 

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