Came Home To Fish Giving Birth!

[Jamieleigh.]

I was away over the weekend and I came back today to find my molly had given birth! All but about 2 of the babys were dead, the bottom of my tank is like a graveyard! they never had a chance of survival as my tank is infected with whitespot, the treatment hasn't worked and now I have dead babys all over the place, what should I do?

 

[mhancock]

I was away over the weekend and I came back today to find my molly had given birth! All but about 2 of the babys were dead, the bottom of my tank is like a graveyard! they never had a chance of survival as my tank is infected with whitespot, the treatment hasn't worked and now I have dead babys all over the place, what should I do?

If you can, get the fry into another tank (in a fry trap if needed) and feed them with finely ground flake.

I'd hoover up the dead fry and do a big water change on the infected tank, but have not (thankfully) had to deal with whitespot so cannot advise on that I'm afraid. I know that most LFS sell meds that may do the trick, but would get the fry out first. If you have any activated carbon in your filter, take it out before adding meds.

 

[sadguppy]

Get the babies out into a small plastic pot which you can float in the main tank asap. Use a normal acclimation technique so you are not using the infected water i.e. take a small amount of the water out and re-fill with fresh water every 5 minutes for an hour, then transfer the babies to a new tub with 100% fresh water. Obvioucly dechlorinate this and make sure you change it everyday.

Then do a HUGE water change in your main tank - 90% - sucking up all the dead fish and giving a good gravel vac.

Whack the temperature up to 30 over the course of a few days and add aquarium salt - a teaspoon of salt per 10 gallons (38 l), less if you have catfish, or more if it is just mollies you have in your tank as they can tolerate salt well, but do it gradually. Mollies will be able to tolerate a lot more salt than the ich parasite and in fact they can be fully acclimated to marine conditions over a few days if they need to be.

You may also want to get some whitespot remedy and follow the instructions on the packet, however it sounds like you may already have done that and the salt/heat method has always worked for me.

This is of course assuming that your tank is fully cycled - either it was done without fish or is a mature tank over two months old - and has no ammonia or nitrite showing. If it is not, you'll have to refer to the beginner resource centre. Ich is almost unavoidable in a cycling tank.

 

[Jamieleigh.]

All the babys died before I could save them, I did about a 90% water change and changed most the gravel. The water is quite cloudy atm, I have 3 fish left! I have used methylene blue and it seems to have worked on 2 of the fish but the other is still infected, the water temp was at about 26'c

 

[sadguppy]

All the babys died before I could save them, I did about a 90% water change and changed most the gravel. The water is quite cloudy atm, I have 3 fish left! I have used methylene blue and it seems to have worked on 2 of the fish but the other is still infected, the water temp was at about 26%.

That's a shame but there will be more babies, I have my fingers crossed that they get through it. As above, the higher the better as above 30 the ugh usually succumbs particularly when there is salt added.