The Shimmies?

[Kairi]

i think one of my mollies has the shimmies. she was shaking pretty bad earlier... i figured she was cold (although no one else seemed to be) so i caught her, and floated her in the betta's tank (it's 2° warmer) and she seemed fine. i turned up the tank temp in the 75 gallon, but after floating her back in there to reacclimate her (just in case the temps were different still) she shimmed even worse! not in the container, but in the tank that is. i turned the temp up a little more (about 1° or 2° more) and turned the light off.

are shimmies only caused by being cold? like i said, no one else seemed bothered- they were playing in the bubbles.

 

[dylema]

I don't know about the shimmies but from your post it seems that she is calming down while in a bag which would probably not have anything to do with the temp. Still I would be making sure that the tank is at the right temperature for all the other fish in there. Maybe she has something else wrong with her. Unless the temperature in the tank has changed recently I can't see that temperature would be to blame.

 

[Kairi]

i turned the AC on today and i think the temp *might* have dropped a degree. who knows. the betta's tank went down 2° - but his was a little warm.

 

[The-Wolf]

IME shimmies in mollies is normerlt accompanied with clamped fins; this is a sign of a bacterial skin infection.
observe the fish for the clamped fins and treat with melafix if present, in fact treat with melafix now, it can't hurt.

 

[Kairi]

will it hurt the fry though? she's doing ok now- we watched her for a while last night- she's a bit skittish now, but otherwise ok. it was just really bizarre

 

[blitztidus]

Shimmies in mollies is common from not having the right type of water. They need to be in brackish water, so if no other fish has a problem with it add about 1- 2 tsp of salt per gallon

 

[Kairi]

i don't think the pleco would be too happy.

 

[Annastasia]

Have you tried a salt bath at all? Those can be effective. Though as Blitz said, it's usually from keeping them in non-ideal conditions. You may just have this problem down the road again, unless you can figure out some way to give them ideal conditions, such as salt or hard, alkaline water.

 

[Kairi]

isn't the water harder the higher the pH is? while i don't plan on messing around with the actual pH of the tank, our water is known to take a turn for higher pH with each month we don't get enough rain- something about the river water? who knows. it killed my last molly when they changed water supplies on us.