Maddy
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- Jun 11, 2012
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I recently purchased a male balloon molly from Petco less than a week ago. Unfortunately, although I did research quite a lot, I did not read about the Nitrate Cycle until AFTER I had purchased my fish. I thought I was doing it right because I had read in a lot of places to let my tank cycle for 2-3 days. I decided to go a little longer so I put in some aquarium salt and water conditioner and let it cycle for 5 days. I know I did this wrong and I do regret it, but I am a first time tank owner (besides a lot of bettas when I was in elementary school) so I still have a lot to learn.
Despite my mistakes, my other two fish (a lyretail molly and golden dojo loach) are doing just fine and are very active. I also have a ghost shrimp and about 11 or so fry that are doing well, considering that I was in no way expecting them... However, my balloon molly is now lying belly up in one of my plants, not moving his fins or tail or anything besides his mouth and gills.
His behavior since I put him in the tank had always been strange. The first two days he would swim at the bottom and kind of twitch over onto his side and rub his side on the sand awkwardly. He would go up and down and up and down with his nose against the side of the tank for a long time. The next day I would see him up in a corner, just floating around in the same spot. Then, since yesterday he seemed to be spending a lot of time near the filter where the water comes out. My other molly would always follow him around so I suspected that they were just strange fish. But now since he is in his current state, the other molly seems to be behaving very normally, swimming around everywhere and nibbling on the algae on one of my rocks.
Besides these strange behaviors, I also noticed that he was the only one that would never eat. Every time I feed my fish, I like to lie there and watch them eat for around 10 minutes or so. I had never seen him even look at the food, not once! All of my other fish eat happily and everyone is usually active, gathering around during feeding time, even my ghost shrimp! But I've never seen him eat
Is he dying? Is he sick? I'm really scared and I don't know what I should do! My other fish seem to be doing perfectly fine besides him, but could it still be something wrong with the water? Please help! Thank you.
EDIT: Ahhh okay he just got up, swam around the top of the tank like he was possessed, knocking into walls and such. He spiraled towards the bottom and is now lying on the bottom near the filter... :'( He keeps getting stuck in the filter!! I don't know what to do.... he looks so miserable...
EDIT 2:
This is him, I think he's dead now though :'( Is there any way to tell from this picture if anything was wrong with him?
Despite my mistakes, my other two fish (a lyretail molly and golden dojo loach) are doing just fine and are very active. I also have a ghost shrimp and about 11 or so fry that are doing well, considering that I was in no way expecting them... However, my balloon molly is now lying belly up in one of my plants, not moving his fins or tail or anything besides his mouth and gills.
His behavior since I put him in the tank had always been strange. The first two days he would swim at the bottom and kind of twitch over onto his side and rub his side on the sand awkwardly. He would go up and down and up and down with his nose against the side of the tank for a long time. The next day I would see him up in a corner, just floating around in the same spot. Then, since yesterday he seemed to be spending a lot of time near the filter where the water comes out. My other molly would always follow him around so I suspected that they were just strange fish. But now since he is in his current state, the other molly seems to be behaving very normally, swimming around everywhere and nibbling on the algae on one of my rocks.
Besides these strange behaviors, I also noticed that he was the only one that would never eat. Every time I feed my fish, I like to lie there and watch them eat for around 10 minutes or so. I had never seen him even look at the food, not once! All of my other fish eat happily and everyone is usually active, gathering around during feeding time, even my ghost shrimp! But I've never seen him eat
Is he dying? Is he sick? I'm really scared and I don't know what I should do! My other fish seem to be doing perfectly fine besides him, but could it still be something wrong with the water? Please help! Thank you.
EDIT: Ahhh okay he just got up, swam around the top of the tank like he was possessed, knocking into walls and such. He spiraled towards the bottom and is now lying on the bottom near the filter... :'( He keeps getting stuck in the filter!! I don't know what to do.... he looks so miserable...
EDIT 2:
This is him, I think he's dead now though :'( Is there any way to tell from this picture if anything was wrong with him?
I promptly removed him from the tank so the others wouldn't start picking at him... I read somewhere (I don't know if this is true) that said that parasites normally do not kill their hosts... But I know I probably shouldn't rule that out. Also, how much water should I change? The entire thing or a certain percentage? And could I just add the salt to my entire tank after doing the water change or is that not enough?
