another unknown death?

[rachandmike]

A few days ago I posted about one of our mollies who died with no apparent cause, other than the other male, well this morning we woke up to find a female dead. Again there was no warning and she appeared fine. I have taken a pic of her to show you some slight discolouration that defiantly wasn’t there last night.

Unfortunately I’m at work atm so I can’t give you any water readings, but I will do tonight. Why is this happening? The water should be ok, I mean our 20+ Fry are doing ok and growing healthy.

Any help and advice would be great.

 

[Bloo]

I've had one-off completely unexplained deaths before. Not sign of illness the night before and just dead in the morning. No other fish and water parameters absolutely fine. Sometimes things like that just happen

The discolouration (to my understanding) happens naturally anyway when the fish starts decomposing (so to speak) within a few hours of death.

However, your case is slightly different with these two unexplained deaths in such a short space of time. How long have you had these mollies ? And when you can, please give us your water readings ?

 

[rachandmike]

i hvae had the mollies for 3 weeks now,

i can give water results about 6 uk time.

i mean could the mollies be old? could it be the "bully" male who seems to never leave the women alone?

its quite distressing to feel this helpless

 

[Bloo]

mmm well to be honest 3 weeks isn't a long time. Perhaps they came from water conditions very different to yours and are struggling to acclimatize / adapt. Some fish find it easier to adapt than others when conditions greatly differ. Some however, just keel over and die
About 18 months ago I got 4 mollies. 2 of which died in a relatively short space of time. Probably also something like 4 - 6 weeks. No other deaths over that period. Water fine and no other illness present.
The other 2 survived absolutely fine - however one of them has a very slight cloudy eye which I "think" was due to stress the fish could not handle. No amount or quarantine or meds could cure this cloudy eye and he's been living happily otherwise over the past 18 months or so.

My "guess" would be that you have a similar situation. It's possible that these mollies came from slightly brackish water before going to your lfs where they were put into a community tank and then over into your tank. And they are just struggling to adapt. Depending on the fish you have in your tank, you might want to add some salt and that might help. However, take care if you're going to do so as obviously other community fish won't take that well to slightly brackish water.

 

[rachandmike]

i currently have 3 danios and 2 mollies. the sadest thing is that im pretty sure that the one that dies is the one who had muchos Fry.

is there anything i can do then?

 

[Bloo]

IF I'm right (and I might well not be, as there is little to go on apart from my own experience and knowledge of mollies) then the only thing really would be to try and introduce some salt. However your Danios wont take kindly to that. So have have catch 22 situation. And it wont benefit your mollies to go back to your lfs, as they'd just go back into a community tank and bought by someone else who will put them into a community tank.

If you could give us your water stats later that might help and give another indication. Also the temperature you keep them at ? Do you still have all your mollie fry ? Other than that, all you can really do is sit tight and hope they adapt to fresh water.
By the way, how long has your tank been set up ?