Help! Molly eye bulging

April FOTM Photo Contest Starts Now!
FishForums.net Fish of the Month
🏆 Click to enter! 🏆

ThatFishGirl6231

Fish Crazy
Joined
Sep 26, 2020
Messages
397
Reaction score
385
Location
Ca
I was just feeding my fish and I noticed my molly's eye was bulging out. I dont know what to do!! Please help! One time, one of my molly's had some sort of fungal thing and it went away with ich medicine. I don't know if thats the same case here, but I'll try. Also, I'm 12 and don't have any aquarium salt. I dont think my parents will take me to the fish store. To my relief, the molly looks perfectly healthy and no signs of sickness. Please help me!! I'm new to this.
 
Water qualities problem, just do 75% water changes.
 
Can you post some pictures of the fish?

Try to clean the tank conditions up with daily water changes and see if that helps. If not, see if your parents will take you to the pet shop, hardware store or swimming pool shop to get a bag of pool salt. Swimming pool salt contains the same salt as aquarium salt and is sold in big bags but it's pretty cheap ($5 a bag). You can also buy pool salt from some chain stores like Kmart, BigW and Target.

-------------------
In the mean time, do the following.

Wipe the inside of the glass down with a clean fish sponge.

Do a 75% water change and gravel clean the substrate every day for a week. 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.
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 them. Tip the bucket of dirty water on the garden/ lawn.

Increase surface turbulence/ aeration when using salt or medications because they reduce the dissolved oxygen in the water.

Add salt if you can get some, (see directions below).

-------------------
SALT
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 (4 heaped tablespoons per 20 litres) will affect some plants and some snails. The lower dose rate 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.
 
From the Manual of Fish Health book vvv
9BB6B8A4-0D3F-4F93-A82A-5082F8A30392.jpeg
43FDC01B-D440-43D5-9DDB-8B6543F255A0.jpeg
 
Thank you guys very much. I've confirmed that he has popeye, and its not that bad. I'll give him aquarium salt.
 

Most reactions

Back
Top