Okay so I have a few updates. I was thinking about transitioning their tank over to brackish water, I was given this advice from my LFS and was wondering if it is a good idea.
The female Molly in question still seems to have those greyish/blackish marks on her body but is acting fine with no more clamped fins. But I have noticed today that she as well as a few of the black Molly fry I have, were flashing and rubbing up on decor. Any recommendations?
Can you post a 1 minute video of the fish rubbing on objects?
Upload videos to YouTube, then copy & paste the link here.
If you use a mobile phone to film the fish, hold the phone in landscape mode so the footage fills the entire screen and doesn't have black bars on either end.
The grey/ black marks on the body could be natural colouration (pigment) that sometimes appears on silver mollies. It's just from genetics and is common in some of them.
If you only have mollies in the tank you can add salt to increase the mineral content but if you have hard water (GH of 250ppm or higher and a pH above 7.0) then you don't normally need to. Salt (either from sea water or marine salts, or from rock salt or other forms of salt) can affect plants, snails, shrimp and other types of fish if they don't come from hard or brackish water.
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You can treat white spot with heat. You raise the water temperature to 30C (86F) and keep it there for 2 weeks or at least 1 week after all the spots have gone. You don't need to add medications if using heat but you do need to increase aeration/ surface turbulence to maximise the oxygen levels in the water. Warm water holds less oxygen than cool water.
If you use heat to treat white spot, do a massive (90%) water change and complete gravel clean before raising the temperature. This helps remove most of the parasites and reduces the number that can/ will infect the fish. Then just keep the tank warm for a couple of weeks.
A coverglass can help hold heat in the tank. You can also tape sheets of 1 inch thick polystyrene foam to the base, back and sides of the tank to help trap heat.
There's more info on treating white spot at the following link.
This is a common question that is often asked, what is ich and how is it recognisable and what causes it? The real term is ICHTHYOPHTHIRIASIS. OR commonly known as white spot. It is an extremely comon parasite that affects aquarium fish. It is highly infectious and potentially lethal and...
www.fishforums.net
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If you are concerned about other forms of protozoan parasites like Costia, Chilodonella & Trichodina, you can add salt to treat them. Just follow the directions in post 3. You could try salt now and see if any white spots appear over the next 2 weeks. If no white spots appear and the fish stop rubbing, then it's probably one of these 3 parasites and not white spot and salt will treat them. If white spots do appear while using salt, you can do a water change and increase the temperature to treat the white spot.
