Mollie's Being Beaten Up?

[Ft fisher]

Hello all. I've just got my first tropical tank just over 4 weeks ago. It is planted and the water level's are all fine. I had some Cherry Barbs and Mollies in together and they was fine, then yesterday I added some shrimp, 2 FW clams and 5 Guppies. They all seemed fine together. I got up this morning and one of the female mollies was dead. She was missing and eye and it looked like her fins and tail had been ripped and torn. The water temo is 25.5 degrees celsius. Does anybody have any ideas to why this happened?? Thanks for the comments in advance guys and gals!!

+++++Edit+++++
Before she died I had 2 Females and 3 Males, just thought it might help to know how many of each sex i had!

 

[roz568]

Hello all. I've just got my first tropical tank just over 4 weeks ago. It is planted and the water level's are all fine. I had some Cherry Barbs and Mollies in together and they was fine, then yesterday I added some shrimp, 2 FW clams and 5 Guppies. They all seemed fine together. I got up this morning and one of the female mollies was dead. She was missing and eye and it looked like her fins and tail had been ripped and torn. The water temo is 25.5 degrees celsius. Does anybody have any ideas to why this happened?? Thanks for the comments in advance guys and gals!!

+++++Edit+++++
Before she died I had 2 Females and 3 Males, just thought it might help to know how many of each sex i had!

hi ive always bin told with mollies,guppies and platties its always best to have 3 females to 1 male coz the males will keep stressing them out with wanting to breed.this might be sum of the problem.so if u have 3 males u should have min of 9 females.i hope this help abit

 

[Ft fisher]

Thank you very much! So more than likely because i had 2 males and only 3 females she was getting harrassed? Very much appreciated mate, alot of help!

 

[Harlequins]

If your tank was started just over 4 weeks ago,its possible it may not be fully cycled...adding the load you did yesterday you probably had a mini cycle.
Whats your exact reading for ammonia/nitrite & nitrate?
What size tank have you got?

Its possible your mollie could have been beaten up,but i think its more than likely that due to adding fish yesterday,either the ammonia &/or nitrite spiked causing the death,then the other fish would probably nibble the body,causing it to look battered.

 

[Twinklecaz]

Maybe I'm thick also but I don't see why the ratio of guppies would have any relevance to a mollie dying?

 

[David12]

hello there molly fish are kind of brackish water fish meaning they need a little bit of salt. howver you have other fish in there that do not need salt dont add sea salt just add the freshwater salt just go to your local fish shop they will help you out the type of your fish you have dont harrse other fish

 

[waterdrop]

Those trying to keep mollies might want to work with some of our members who keep a lot of the different mollie types. There is important information to be learned, revolving around mineral content (hardness), salt and different mollie types.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[JoshuaA]

Where abouts did you get the FW clams from, mainstream pet shop or little aquarium?

 

[Ft fisher]

Got them from P@H, but really regretting getting them now, all I hear is bad things about them!!

 

[JoshuaA]

Got them from P@H, but really regretting getting them now, all I hear is bad things about them!!

I haven't heard anything bad about the FW clams, however I agree if you mean P@H. I would like to be able to find someone else other than P@H who stock them. I had a bad situation when I purchased my GFs aquarium from them. My Neons got whitespot and my guppys all died in a week. I'd be worried if a FW clam would contaminate our water.

They're apparently great filter feeders though.

Chin up anyway! You'll get through it.

 

[Ft fisher]

Since i've put them in on sunday 2 mollies have died (1 within the last hour) and a cherry barb. Shall i just get them out the tank? Saying that, the same day i did add 5 guppies and 4 shrimp. The mollie who just died seemed fine until i see a shrimp with a black thing on the bottom of the tank and wondered 'what's that?' to discover it was the body of yet another dead mollie! Could it be the shrimps, guppies, or clams? Or all 3?

++++Edit++++

The fish seem perfectly fine, no disease (that i can see) swimming around like normal, no bullying or anything untoward that i can tell, which suffice to say, probably isn't much help as i've never kept fish before. Anyway, they seem fine one second, and when i look again the fish is just dead...it's really getting to me!!!! What am i doing wrong?

 

[Shelby]

I'm guessing dumping in a big load of fish threw off your water parameters and that is why your fish are dying. What test kit are you using? Post your numbers and your tank size and hopefully someone can help. I've made the same mistake when I first started out too. I have finally got my tank situated and have not lost fish in awhile

 

[Ft fisher]

tyvm for the advice, stupid P@H giving me wrong advice!!!! I'm using test strips but been told they're not very good, so if i gave a reading i doubt it would be reliable. Starting today i'm going to do 40% water changes every 2days until my strips read okay. Sadly i cant afford a liquid test kit at the moment!

 

[waterdrop]

I've noticed that members mention the UK ebay quite often for finding good prices on the API kit that many of us use. Knowing the prices there might help you set your sites on what it would take. Or.. its possible in your case that a pair of single test kits -might- be less expensive, just a liquid ammonia and a liquid nitrite pair of kits, but I'm not sure. You are on to an important thing now - it really doesn't work to have others telling you your results.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[OldMan47]

A 40% change every other day will help a lot on the water quality. If your fish population is low compared to the water volume it may be enough. I find that many UK members post very low hardness numbers when they are actually aware of their water hardness. It means that they do great with things like cories and angels but have a deuce of a time keeping mollies.
Contrary to what somebody already said, pet shop mollies do not need salt or even brackish water. What they do need is water fairly high in mineral content with a pH above 7.0. For me that is easy. I have a hard time keeping angels healthy because my water is too hard for them and has a pH of 7.8. Mine just thrive in tap water but I realize that water is not the same everywhere. Many mollies do not do well in hard water or high pH water but you will seldom find those mollies in a pet shop. They are the province of livebearer specialists. With over 20 wild species called molly as a part of their common name, all different kinds of waters are right for different molly species. I only had pet shop mollies until I went to a livebearer fish convention last month. Now I also have some Poecilia caucana which is a wild type molly that also does well in my hard water.
Many of the more common mollies can tolerate salt as high as the salt water used for a reef tank and were used in the past to cycle a saltwater tank. (I don't know if it is still common practice.) These fish are tough as long as you don't restrict their water's mineral content.