Molly Dance

[tropicaltink81]

hi all had my female molly for 3 months and in this time she has done a strange dance type thing its like she is walking through the water wired i know but then doing this she shakes her body


i cant reli explain the motion if this have any of you seen this before might she be ill shes the only one who does this my other mollys dont its like its a mating type thing? i dont have a clue

please help

 

[LauraFrog]

Please don't post two topics for one question, the answers will be spread around both of them. One is plenty.

This sounds like the shimmies to me. Mollies in the wild are brackish-water fish and like a bit of salt in the water. My tank is 1/2 gram salt per litre - almost freshwater, and my mollies are fine. There's no consensus whatsoever about how much salt they actually need. Most people do seem to agree than insufficient salt = shimmies.

Your molly is sick, but it can probably be saved. What other fish are in the tank, how big is it, when did you last do a water change, and have you added anything to the water (chlorine neutraliser, fertiliser, anything.)

 

[tropicaltink81]

i do water changed every 2 weeks aprox 20% my tank has salt in it and it is a 290 litre tank i have 2 swords 1 betta fighter 3 platy 3guppy 2 molly n 3 balloon molly and 1 tiny plec he 2cm i have salt in my tank and y aint my other mollys dancing aswell?
surley if it was salt they would all b doing this

thanks for help

 

[LauraFrog]

That would make sense. The tank certainly isn't overstocked by any stretch of the imagination. (Unlike mine. I would kill for a tank that big.)
My mollies live in just about fresh water and there is absolutely nothing wrong with mine. There is a pinned post in this topic called Mollies Need Salt, but I can't up the salt in the tank because I have a bristlenose in there and they don't like that much salt. I haven't had a hitch.

I have never seen this before, I'm just sort of regurgitating something I remembered from reading that post. You'd get a lot more information from reading it than secondhand from me. I think shimmies is a pretty generic sign of sick molly, but I've never seen it. I'm not really being that helpful, I know... sorry!