Molly has grey patches (and snail infestation)

[Colin_T]

White spot medication should work.

Melafix doesn't do squat and isn't worth wasting your money on. About the only thing Melafix is useful for is adding to some boiled water to inhale the fumes and clear the sinuses.

 

[Hedgely]

Sorry to bother, it's me again. The medication is not doing anything after the full cycle of treatment, instead it has spread to every inhabitant of the fish tank and also the fins of the white clouds have started to rot. Could it be something else? What should I do, please?

 

[Colin_T]

What medication did you use and how long did you treat the tank for?
Did you remove any carbon from the filter before treating the tank?

Did you measure the water volume in the tank before treating?
Overdosing medications will harm fish and can cause them to produce excess mucous.

Post some pictures of the fish.

If the fish have a cream or white film over their body it is excess mucous.
If they have cream, white or grey patches on their body it is a protozoan infection.

Fin rot is caused by poor water quality that lets bacteria build up. The poor water quality damages the mucous layer on the fish and allows bacteria to get in and cause an infection. Big daily water changes and gravel cleaning the substrate will normally fix fin rot.

If your GH is still low, then you nee to raise that so it is at least 200ppm. Mollies have heaps of issues in soft water, and bacteria and protozoans do better in soft water than in hard water.

 

[Hedgely]

Thank you so much for your fast reply. I appreciate it so much that you're here to help me out!

I'm aware that my tap water might not be suitable for Mollies anymore, and I will look into relocating the fish later, but right now I really just want them to survive ((

Answering your questions :

I did treat with API super ick cure (picture attached). I treated with one package per tank. I have a 20 gallon tank (about 18g volume) and I used approximately half the dose (=1 package) because I am currently homing a loach from a friend in the tank to help with the snail problem, and it said that for scaleless fish use half the dose. So, one package, after 48 hours another package, after 48 hours 25% water change (which is today). Carbon filter was removed.

Before starting the medication, I did 50% water changes every 1-2 days.

Pictures of the fish attached. I'm bringing the GH up to 200 with calcium chloride and magnesium chloride. However, that issue should only apply for mollies, and now the first white clouds are showing symptoms?

Only the first molly that I reported sick had grey patches. The other fish "just" have dissolving fins, no patches.

 

[Colin_T]

If it's a protozoan infection you have to treat them for 1-2 weeks so you kill any baby parasites that hatch. 1 week is normally sufficient but sometimes you need to treat for 2 weeks.

What sort of loach is in the tank and when did you get it?

The bits missing from the tails almost look like a bite, as in something has bitten their tails. Most loaches aren't too bad but some loaches can get nasty and attack fish at night.

Are the fin rays in the tail still there?
The fin rays are the lines running from the body through the tail and have the coloured skin over them. Early stages of fin rot will usually dissolve the skin and leave the fin rays behind.

Fin rot is usually pretty slow to start off so depending on how long it took for the tail to disappear, it might be something biting the fish or it might be fin rot.

If the piece of tail disappeared overnight then it was probably the other fish. If it happened over a couple of days then it might be fin rot. However, it doesn't look infected. Bad cases of fin rot show up as red lines in the tail and around the damaged area.

 

[Hedgely]

The loach has been there about one day before the symptoms occurred. Super bad timing!!! It is a red tail zebra loach, max size around 2.5-3 inch. It is a bit too big to stay in a 20g also suppoased to live in groups, so it's only there temporary for the snail problem.

For the molly with grey patches, it is as you described. It took a couple days to slowly develop the fin rot, and the fin rays are still there. For the mountain minnows, I honestly don't know. I just saw it today. It could have been the loach.

What do you suggest? Keep the super ick cure treatment?

I owe you one!

 

[Colin_T]

The red tail loach is not the issue, they are a suckermouth loach and not one of the agro Botia species.

API super ick cure contains Malachite Green, which treats protozoans. And it contains Nitrofurazone, which treats most bacteria.

If you have enough medication left, try a couple more treatments with the API ick cure and see how it goes. But do a 75-90% water change and gravel clean the substrate before retreating the tank.
Make sure the new water is free of chlorine/ chloramine before it's added to the tank.

If you are out of the API ick treatment, look for a broad spectrum fish medication that contains Malachite Green, Formaldehyde/ Formalin, and Methylene Blue or something similar.