Sick Mollies?

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armour72

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Erie County, Pennsylvania
Hi! I have 2 1yr old Mollies, a dalmation and white, acting really strange. They were acting perfectly normal this morning. The only change to my tank was swapping out the activated carbon and putting in Purigen last week. Water parameters are good. I think I've been feeding too much because I have 9 baby loaches born in the beginning of January and they are growing and I have been feeding more. I will stop that. Everyone else seems normal. The dalmatian had stool hanging, but it fell off after a while.
Any ideas? I don't want to lose my fish. 😢
 
This is the way her tail twists to the side. She will take off swimming for a few seconds then start to wobble. She then stops and does this twisting.
 
I can't see where my videos uploaded. Here is a picture.
 

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Could you upload the video itself to see how this molly is actually swimming? You can upload your video on YouTube. And copy the URL to this forum.
 
They are shimmying and covered in excess mucous. There is something wrong with the water.

Shimmying is a common problem with mollies kept in soft water, acidic water (pH below 7.0) or really dirty water with lots of protozoans.

Excess mucous is produced by the fish when there is something in the water stressing them out.

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The stringy white poop is probably from intestinal worms. Section 3 of the following link has info on treating them.

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What are the tank dimensions (length x width x height)?

What is the GH (general hardness), KH (carbonate hardness) and pH of your water supply (in numbers)?
This information can usually be obtained from your water supply company's website (Water Analysis Report) or by telephoning them. If they can't help you, take a glass full of tap water to the local pet shop and get them to test it for you. Write the results down (in numbers) when they do the tests. And ask them what the results are in (eg: ppm, dGH, or something else).

What is the ammonia, nitrite and nitrate in numbers?
What sort of filter is on the tank?
How often and how do you clean the filter?

How often do you do water changes and how much do you change?
Do you gravel clean the substrate when you do a water change?
Do you dechlorinate the new water before adding it to the aquarium?

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Right now you need to test the water, clean the filter, do a huge (75%) water change and gravel clean the substrate. Then add some salt. If your pH, GH & KH is low, you will need to start adding mineral salts (African Rift Lake water conditioner) to raise them.

SALT
You can add rock salt (often sold as aquarium salt), swimming pool salt, or any non iodised salt (sodium chloride) to the aquarium at the dose rate of 1 heaped tablespoon per 20 litres (5 gallons) 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, Bettas & 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 (4 heaped tablespoons per 20 litres) will affect some plants and some snails. The lower dose rate (1-2 heaped tablespoons per 20 litres) will not affect fish, plants, shrimp or snails.

After you use salt and the fish have recovered, you do a 10% water change each day for a week using only fresh water that has been dechlorinated. Then do a 20% water change each day for a week. Then you can do bigger water changes after that. This dilutes the salt out of the tank slowly so it doesn't harm the fish.

If you do water changes while using salt, you need to treat the new water with salt before adding it to the tank. This will keep the salt level stable in the tank and minimise stress on the fish.

When you first add salt, add the salt to a small bucket of tank water and dissolve the salt. Then slowly pour the salt water into the tank near the filter outlet. Add the salt over a couple of minutes.

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BASIC FIRST AID FOR FISH
Test the water for ammonia, nitrite, nitrate and pH.

Wipe the inside of the glass down with a clean fish sponge. This removes the biofilm on the glass and the biofilm will contain lots of harmful bacteria, fungus, protozoans and various other microscopic life forms.

Do a 75% water change and gravel clean the substrate every day for a week or until the problem is identified. The water changes and gravel cleaning will reduce the number of disease organisms in the water and provide a cleaner environment for the fish to recover in. It also removes a lot of the gunk and this means any medication can work on treating the fish instead of being wasted killing the pathogens in the gunk.
Make sure any new water is free of chlorine/ chloramine before it is added to the tank.

Clean the filter if it hasn't been done in the last 2 weeks. However, if the filter is less than 6 weeks old, do not clean it. Wash the filter materials/ media in a bucket of tank water and re-use the media. Tip the bucket of dirty water on the garden/ lawn. Cleaning the filter means less gunk and cleaner water with fewer pathogens so any medication (if needed) will work more effectively on the fish.

Increase surface turbulence/ aeration to maximise the dissolved oxygen in the water.
 
Thank you for the advice
-- I have a 32.5 gallon Fluval Flex tank. 32x15x15 2-3" Flourite substrate. It's been running for over a year.
--I have not been vacuuming as much because of the tiny elusive babies that I can't catch. But it never really looks bad so I only did it when it looked like it needed to be vacuumed.
-- I do a 50% water change twice a week religiously. I do this because I know I am overstocked now. That was not intentional.

Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 20
KH 10
GH 5
Water temp 77-78.5
2 long air stones/strips and the pump that came with the tank makes great water movement at the surface.
Ph is 8.3-8.5 except when the CO2 is running. It then drops to 7.5. I haven't seen any problems since I started that a few weeks ago. The CO2 runs 8hrs a day.
-- I have well water and so not use dechlorinator. The pH is 8.2 from the faucets. I use Stability with each water change.
-- I wash the filter sponges and media in tank water every other week. I've never washed with any other water.

I think my phone made their scales look worse than they really are. To me they look exactly the same as they always have with the exception of their behavior changes. All the other fish are acting normal, thankfully. The white one is acting almost normal today. No change with the other. He's just sitting at the bottom of the tank. If I've made no introductions into the tank can it still be worms? I'll treat the whole tank. Or I can set up a hospital tank. Would constipation cause behavioral changes like this too? I have MetroPlex, KanaPlex, and ParaGuard. I have other meds too. I bought them in the case of an emergency but have never had to use any of them. I didn't know what was wrong with these 2 so I was afraid to give them the wrong medicine.

I did a 75% water change last night, but that was all I did. I didn't see your response until this morning.

Thank you for all your advice!
 
You were 100% correct, Colin. The black molly had another white string and I was able to get it this time. I think its a tape worm and I'm mortified. I don't understand how this happened. I had moved him to a hospital tank, but now I think I should move him back and treat the entire tank. I'll move my snails out of the tank. I bought PraziPro. I only have epsom salts with magnesium. I will have to chase out for plain salt and do that as well. Should I be including an antibiotic like metronidazole too? Thank you again.
 

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Can you post a picture showing the entire aquarium?

What types of fish are in the tank?

The GH of the water is way too low for mollies. It is less than 100ppm and needs to be at least 250ppm for mollies. You need to raise the GH with a Rift Lake water conditioner and get it up to around 14dGH. Rift Lake water conditioners are a white powder that contains magnesium, calcium and other mineral salts. These get dissolved in a bucket of tap water, aerated for 24 hours and then that water can be used to do water changes on the aquarium. You would use Rift Lake water conditioner at about half strength. When adding harder water, you do small water changes 10-20% every few days to slowly increase the hardness.

However, you have Borneo scooters in the tank and they prefer softer water. Other fishes like tetras also prefer soft water like what you currently have (5dGH / 90ppm). I'm not sure what other fishes you have in the tank but ideally you want a second aquarium to keep the hard water fishes like mollies and guppies, and another tank for the soft water fishes.

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CO2
Unless you have lots of fast growing plants in the aquarium, and have lots of bright light above the aquarium, and you add lots of aquarium plant fertiliser, there is no point adding carbon dioxide (CO2).

You also have too much CO2 going into the aquarium if it is dropping the pH during the day, and a fluctuating pH will harm and can even kill the fish.

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MEDICATIONS
Any medications you have sitting around can easily go off if they are kept in a warm, bright or humid place. You need to check the expiry date on anything before you buy it or use it. Medications should be kept in a cool, dry, dark area to maximise their shelf life. I kept my test kits/ medications in a 2 litre icecream bucket with a lid and put it on the bottom shelf in the fridge.
*NB* Make sure children and animals can't get the medications or anything like test kits because they can harm or kill them.

Metroplex (contains Metronidazole) and Kanaplex (contains Kanamycin) are antibiotics that should only be used on known bacterial infections that haven't responded to normal treatments. Improper use of antibiotics has lead to drug resistant bacteria that kill people, animals, birds, fish and reptiles. The fish do not have a bacterial infection and you do not need to use these medications.

Paraguard is for treating external protozoan infections (white spot, velvet, Costia, Chilodonella, Trichodina). Your fish don't have a protozoan infection and you don't need to use this either.

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WORMS
Most common livebearers like mollies, guppies, platies and swordtails that are sold in shops will have intestinal worms. They pick these up at the fish farms (most are located in tropical Asia) and carry them for months or even years before they show any symptoms.

There is no point isolating the fish in a different aquarium. If one fish in the tank has worms, they all have worms and you need to treat the entire tank (and every tank in the house at the same time), including shrimp and snails because these can be intermediate hosts for some types of parasitic worms.

Praziquantel can be used to treat tapeworm and gill flukes. Prazipro contains praziquantel and can be used to start with but you should treat for round worms too.

Levamisole is used to treat thread/ round worms. Round worms are more common than flat/ tapeworms but fish can carry both sorts of worms at the same time.
 
Hello. I treated the tank with PraziPro 5 days ago but did not have a medication for round worms so I had to order some. It just came yesterday. I held off using it since today was to be the second dose of PraziPro (which I did). After the first dose everyone seemed to go back to normal. Yesterday one of the mollies started getting lethargic again, and today the other started. Hopefully this second dose works. I have a guppy in that tank that was born there. I've never taken him out. He passed worms. He never acted sick. I never saw anyone else with the exception of the original molly. But I'm sure there were others.

I found Cloverleaf Absolute Wormer Plus. It's main ingredient is Flubendazole. What I had found and purchased was Fritz Expel-P. The main ingredient is levanisole hydrochloride. Since I haven't been able to use it yet I was considering getting the Absolute Wormer and using that in 5 days. Do you think that would be a better idea?

I have 3 mollies, 2 guppies, 5 cherry barbs, 5 neon tetra, a blue phantom pleco, 3 adult reticulated hillstream loaches, and 9 baby loaches.
 

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You deworm the fish once a week for 4 weeks, not every 5 days.

If you have shrimp or snails in the tank that you want to keep, stay with Praziquantel and Levamisole.

If you don't have any shrimp or snails then use the flubendazole.

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To work out the volume of water in the tank:
measure length x width x height in cm.
divide by 1000.
= volume in litres.

When you measure the height, measure from the top of the substrate to the top of the water level.

If you have big rocks or driftwood in the tank, remove these before measuring the height of the water level so you get a more accurate water volume.

You can use a permanent marker to draw a line on the tank at the water level and put down how many litres are in the tank at that level.

There is a calculator/ converter in the "FishForum.net Calculator" under "Useful Links" at the bottom of this page that will let you convert litres to gallons if you need it.

Remove carbon from the filter before treating with chemicals or it will adsorb the medication and stop it working. You do not need to remove the carbon if you use salt.

Increase aeration when using medications or salt.
 

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