Curious about Molly’s

[jj17]

I have 4 balloon mollys, had them about a month now. 3 out of four seem to be itching more than they should but can’t seem to see any signs of why, no white spots. fins and tails are in good condition, all eat as they should. water is changed 30% weekly with one being about 50 or 60% every fourth week. levels are always checked and fine. they have orange spots on them but can only assume its through their breeding as doesnt seem to fit in with any disease i’ve come across, as i had suspected velvet but doesnt seem to look like it. has anyone else come across this? one of the balloon mollys popped out a bunch of fry in the night not long after we got them, and the fry have started to flip and scratch themselves off things the last couple of days. the fourth molly is the smallest of the bunch, very slim he doesn’t actually look like a balloon molly and he’s a very shy fella. spends most of his day hiding in caves or under plants. comes out at feeding time but doesn't seem to eat a lot, can’t tell if somethings wrong with him as he appears completely healthy or if he’s just a quiet wee guy. sorry for the long winded post, i’ve had a few die on me so far and feel like i’m always fretting over them now, still fairly new to keeping fish and just trying to do best by them.

 

[Essjay]

Have you checked the ammonia and nitrite levels in the water? Raised levels can also cause them scratch.

 

[Colin_T]

When the tank lights are off, shine a torch on the fish and see if they have a gold/ yellow sheen over any of their body. If they do, then they have velvet.

You can treat velvet by rising the water temperature to 30C (86F) and keeping it there for 2 weeks. Do a 75-80% water change and gravel clean the substrate before raising the temperature. Make sure any new water is free of chlorine/ chloramine before it's added to the tank. And increase aeration to maximise oxygen levels.

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If you only have mollies in the tank, you can add 2-4 heaped tablespoons of rock salt, sea salt or swimming pool salt for every 20 litres of tank water. Keep the salt in the tank for a couple of weeks and it can help with external protozoan infections.

If you do water changes while using salt, add salt to the buckets of water before adding them to the tank.

 

[jj17]

out of curiosity, can i do all that anyway as a precautionary measure?

 

[Colin_T]

yep

 

[jj17]

thanks so much, didn’t see a gold sheen in the torch light but i don’t want to have another case of reacting to symptoms too late. away to get aquarium salt then will start the process. i had read that they should be kept in darkness if using heat as a treatment, would this be for the entire two weeks?

 

[Colin_T]

If you have live plants, keep the lights on like normal otherwise the plants will die.
If you don't have plants, you can turn the lights off if you want.