New To Balloon Mollies, Please Help!

[tonks118]

So I bought two balloon mollies a few days ago. There is one male and one female in 10 gallon tank. pH - 7.8 and the ammonia level is not ideal, but not too thigh either. Water temp is 78 and the tank has freshwater salt. I know a lot of it has to do with the tanks cycle and I've been doing 25% to 50% percent water changes every two days. But my female mollie seems to want to spend a lot of time in one place on the bottom. She doesn't do this constantly, but more often than not. She'll swim around fine just to go back to her little corner of the tank. Sometimes she'll spend a lot of time near the top of the tank but she always goes back to the same spot and spends about 70% of her time there. The male molly looks fine and very active. He's very hyper and loves to speed around the tank. The female is slower. I don't think she's struggling for air, but is that possible? I've never had mollies before so I don't know what is normal behavior and what I should watch. My mollies seem very happy together and they both have healthy appetites. Any advice or ideas? Please help. I love my new fish and will do whatever it takes to help them is something is wrong.

 

[tonks118]

I just noticed that there is a raised white spot on her side. I guess I never saw it before because it blends so well but when I think about it, it was probably there when I bought her because I haven't even had her for a week. What is it?

 

[Spishkey]

possibly white spot or ich/ick

if you nip over to the emergencies section there is plenty of info on it there.

 

[twilight_angel]

try this link...

http/www.fishforums.net/content/forum/25...dy-To-Drop-Fry/

it really help...

promise...

 

[OldMan47]

Welcome to the forum Tonks.
If your fish has whitespot, AKA ich, I have a link in my signature to a place that explains rather well what ich is and some of the things that can be done to treat it.
If you just got your tank when you got your mollies, you are in a fish-in cycle and the general health problems and behaviors you are seeing are probably from chemical stress. I also have a link in my signature to a fish-in cycle thread that will help you understand what is going on. If you are in a fish-in cycle and don't have testing equipment, I would change at least 30% of the water every day with dechlorinated water to help the fish until you can get the testing kit.
As a side note, many people use salt to try to help their mollies but I have found that mollies do fine in my tanks with no salt added. The real needs that mollies seem to have is a high pH of say 7.6 or more and hard water of 10 degrees hardness or more. At that level, the salt seems to not help at all. If you decide to use salt, make sure it is sea salt and not "aquarium salt". Sea salt has a lot of salts and pH stabilizing components to it that will get the hardness and pH buffering up so the mollies will thrive. So called aquarium salt is basically the stuff on the kitchen table with no iodine added. It is a real profit maker for the fish store because it sells for many times the price of table salt and costs no more to mine and package.

 

[twilight_angel]

did the link help you...