Sick Molly

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KerryP

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Can anyone help me please, I had a sick Molly and if I don't find out what's wrong with her she is going to die, I lost one before of this same thing, I have search everywhere to try and find out what is wrong with her and all I found was another couple of people having the same problem but no one new what it was. She is lethargic and she is swimming with her tail drooping down, needless to say not swimming very well, when she first got sick it was like she had clamped fin but now her fins are not to bad, she is still eating ok, does anyone have any idea what this might be?
 
Hi, sorry I'm new to this, my tank size is 90litres/25gallons, my levels are ok except the Nitrate was only slightly high
 
Hi, sorry I'm new to this, my tank size is 90litres/25gallons, my levels are ok except the Nitrate was only slightly high
We need numbers to be able to help :)
 
and I just realised that you probably mean numbers of water testing, PH 7.8, Ammonia 0 ppm, Nitrite 0 ppm,
Nitrate 5.0 ppm
 
If you post pictures and a short 30 second video of the fish, it can help with identifying health issues.

If the pictures are too big for the website, set the camera's resolution to its lowest setting and take some more. The lower resolution will make the images smaller and they should fit on this website. Check the pictures on your pc and find a couple that are clear and show the problem, and post them here. Make sure you turn the camera's resolution back up after you have taken the pics otherwise all your pictures will be small.

If the video is too big for this website, post it on YouTube and copy & paste the link here. We can view it at YouTube. If you are using a mobile phone to take the video, have the phone horizontal so the video takes up the entire screen. If you have the phone vertical, you get video in the middle and black on either side.

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Livebearers like mollies are regularly infected by protozoan infections and suffer from low GH (general hardness). Poor water quality (ammonia, nitrite, nitrate) and acid water (pH below 7.0) will also cause problems.

Check the GH of the water and increase it with mineral salts if you need to. Mollies need a GH above 250ppm.

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Do a 75% water change and gravel clean the substrate every day for the next 2 weeks.
Make sure any new water is free of chlorine/ chloramine before it's added to the tank.

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You can add rock salt (often sold as aquarium salt), sea salt or swimming pool salt to the aquarium at the dose rate of 2 heaped tablespoon per 20 litres of water.

If you only have livebearers (guppies, platies, swordtails, mollies), goldfish or rainbowfish in the tank you can double that dose rate, so you would add 4 heaped tablespoons per 20 litres.

Keep the salt level like this for at least 2 weeks but no longer than 4 weeks otherwise kidney damage can occur. Kidney damage is more likely to occur in fish from soft water (tetras, Corydoras, angelfish, gouramis, loaches) that are exposed to high levels of salt for an extended period of time, and is not an issue with livebearers, rainbowfish or other salt tolerant species.

The salt will not affect the beneficial filter bacteria but the higher dose rate will affect some plants. The lower dose rate will not affect plants.

After you use salt and the fish have recovered, you do a 10% water change each day for a week using only fresh water that has been dechlorinated. Then do a 20% water change each day for a week. Then you can do bigger water changes after that. This dilutes the salt out of the tank slowly so it doesn't harm the fish.

If you do water changes while using salt, you need to treat the new water with salt before adding it to the tank. This will keep the salt level stable in the tank and minimise stress on the fish.

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The following link has information about what to do if your fish get sick. It's long and boring but worth a read when you have some spare time.
 

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