Unhappy/hiding/pooping molly

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TO KYO

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Yesterday I did a 50% water change because I was introducing cichclid lake salt (5 ml) for the first time in my 20g tank because my water hardness was too low and now my fish is acting weird and not very interested on food
 
45CBE4C3-C2ED-405D-8E76-7EA599D0B64A.jpeg
 
LOL, gotta love the title "Unhappy/hiding/pooping molly"

Maybe she wants some piece and quiet while going to the toilet. My dog use to hide in the bushes or behind plants when she went to the loo. She was a civilised dog. :)

But on a serious note, the rift lake salts won't be causing this unless you suddenly raised the GH too much (by 100ppm +), or if the pH has gone up a lot (say 7.0 to 7.5+).

She might be pregnant and going into labour or she might be unwell. Just monitor the water quality (ammonia, nitrite, nitrate) and make sure that is all good. You want 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite, and less than 20ppm nitrate.

The pH has probably gone up a bit due to the rift lake conditioner and that might be stressing her a bit if the pH was below 7.0 before you added the rift lake salts. If pH is stressing her, she should recover in a few days to a week. If the pH has gone up a lot, do not do another water change for a week unless you have an ammonia or nitrite problem.

At this stage, test the water and monitor the fish. She should be ok. If she gets worse, post another picture and we will go from there. But my guess is she is either going into labour or the increased GH and pH has stressed her a bit.

Are the other mollies in the tank ok?
 
Itā€™s a male and my ammonia is at .25, nitrite 0, and ph went from 6.8-7.2
 
It's probably the pH and ammonia. The pH change isn't much ad the fish should be able to cope with it. However, ammonia becomes more toxic in water with a pH above 7.0. The higher the pH, the more toxic it becomes.

Reduce feeding to a couple of times a week, and add some dechlorinator to the tank that binds with ammonia. You can also do big water changes (75%) each day to help dilute it.

How long has the tank been set up for?
If it's been set up for more than a month, it shouldn't have ammonia issues now unless you cleaned or replaced some of the filter media.
 
BEC5975E-CE7E-4136-8F89-A352421D0E3B.jpeg
It's probably the pH and ammonia. The pH change isn't much ad the fish should be able to cope with it. However, ammonia becomes more toxic in water with a pH above 7.0. The higher the pH, the more toxic it becomes.

Reduce feeding to a couple of times a week, and add some dechlorinator to the tank that binds with ammonia. You can also do big water changes (75%) each day to help dilute it.

How long has the tank been set up for?
If it's been set up for more than a month, it shouldn't have ammonia issues now unless you cleaned or replaced some of the filter media.
Look how heā€™s swimming now (not loodking for food by the way)
 
I think he is stuffed. I would probably euthanise him but you can wait a day and see if he gets better, but once they start swimming like that it's usually over.
 
about to give up on this. Thereā€™s always something. First was the ich, then ammonia spike, fungus, low ph, low water hardness, internal parasites, whatā€™s next. Fish are so delicate Iā€™ve rather just get another cat
 
Fish are so delicate Iā€™ve rather just get another cat
LOL. Don't give up just yet. You have been through the hardest part and things will settle down soon. You also have the forum to help you.

When I started fish keeping you didn't get information from anybody. If you walked into a pet shop and asked about a fish you got told they were freshwater and would all go together. You got sold a tank and told to go home and fill it with tap water, add some "aquarium salt", which was sodium chloride that had been dyed with Methylene Blue. Then you went back and got fish. If you asked about cleaning you were told to drain the tank each week, wash it out with tap water and refill it.

Once the filter settles down and the GH is correct, you should see an improvement in the fish's general health. And if they have any babies, the young fish will usually do really well. :)
 
LOL. Don't give up just yet. You have been through the hardest part and things will settle down soon. You also have the forum to help you.

When I started fish keeping you didn't get information from anybody. If you walked into a pet shop and asked about a fish you got told they were freshwater and would all go together. You got sold a tank and told to go home and fill it with tap water, add some "aquarium salt", which was sodium chloride that had been dyed with Methylene Blue. Then you went back and got fish. If you asked about cleaning you were told to drain the tank each week, wash it out with tap water and refill it.

Once the filter settles down and the GH is correct, you should see an improvement in the fish's general health. And if they have any babies, the young fish will usually do really well. :)
Any idea of what couldā€™ve caused this? I believe it was the Algea wafers
 
Algae Wafers don't cause problems to fish unless they are left uneaten and cause ammonia problems, but you get ammonia from any uneaten food, be it flake, pellet, or frozen foods that sit on the bottom of the tank.

--------------------------
Mollies and other livebearers are just a weak group of fish due to inbreeding. They are regularly infested with intestinal worms and gill flukes, and quite often have external protozoan infections caused by overcrowding at the breeders, importers and pet shop. Once the fish have been cleaned up and are free of these diseases, they usually recover and do well. However, sometimes the fish are just too weak due to the stresses of being shipped half way around the world, being put into numerous different tanks with different water chemistry, caught repeatedly in nets, bagged up, given strange food and basically having their lives turned upside down. Considering what fish go through, it's amazing that any survive.

Most fish deaths in aquariums are a combination of stress from poor water quality, over crowding, lack of food, low oxygen levels, sudden changes in pH, and diseases.

I will give you a run down of how most aquarium fish make it to local pet shops where they can be bought.

Most aquarium fish come from fish farms in Asia. They are grown in outdoor ponds using whatever water is available. It might be river water, rain water, well water of even sewerage. Thousands of fish are kept in these ponds for several months while they grow. They are extremely overcrowded in the ponds. They get fed flake, pellets and live foods like daphnia. The daphnia and other live foods are often grown in sewerage ponds. These conditions where the fish are grown cause the fish to become infested with intestinal worms, gill flukes, protozoan parasites and various other disease organisms.

The ponds the fish are grown in don't always have the best water chemistry for the species. Many livebearers are grown in rain water and salt (sodium chloride) is added to the water to stop them dying. Whilst this can keep the fish alive, it isn't the best for them in the long run.

When the fish are big enough to be sold, they are netted out of the pond with big drag nets. They are put into plastic storage containers or buckets and left in the sun for however long it takes to get all the fish out of the pond. The buckets do not normally have aeration and a 40 litre (10 gallon) plastic storage container that is half full of water, might contain several hundred adult mollies. It's basically a container of liquid fish. These containers of fish are then taken to a shed where the fish are sorted. This usually entails a group of children and women sitting around buckets of fish, catching them out one at a time with a spoon, and putting them into other buckets of water. The fish are sorted by size, colour, fins, etc. While the fish are being sorted and fasted they do have aeration.

After the sorting process they are usually fasted for 24 hours before being bagged up and sent to an exporter.

Lots of fish are put into each bag with only a small amount of water and the bag is filled with oxygen. Think 50 adult mollies in a couple of litres of water sealed up in a plastic shopping bag. The fish are in these bags for anywhere up to 24 hours or more while they travel from the fish farm to the exporter. Normally the fish are taken to the exporter by vehicle and many of the roads are dirt roads that have lots of bumps and potholes in them. The fish that are overcrowded in the bags, often bounce around in the back of a truck while they are driven to the exporters. This is also in tropical Asia where the temperature can get pretty hot, 40C (104F). There is not normally any airconditioning in these vehicles or the packing facilities at the fish farm. Basically there will be a family with kids and adults working outdoors or under a tin roof.

While the fish are in the bags, the pH drops to really low levels (sometimes it drops below a pH of 5.0). The ammonia levels go up but the toxicity of the ammonia is minimised by the low pH. However, the low pH and ammonia still harms the fish.

At one of the importers I worked at, we tested the pH of the water in bags of fish that had just arrived in Australia, and the pH in some bags was as low as 3.8. Battery acid in a car battery has a pH of about 3.0 and will dissolve paint. So a pH of 3.8 is paint stripper or battery acid and yet there were live fish in these bags.

When the fish get to the exporters, they are acclimatised to tanks and the pH is gradually increased a bit but not too much. The fish are held at the exporters in overstocked tanks until they are required for an order that will be sent overseas to the US, UK, Australia or somewhere else. The fish are not fed much while at the exporters. The exporters tanks are usually bare glass aquariums with no substrate, ornaments, plants or picture on the back.

When an order has been received, the fish are fasted for another 24 hours before being bagged up, put in eskies and sent to the airport where they get loaded onto an aircraft and flown to a different country. When fish are shipped by plane they are very heavily packed. You might have 100 mollies in a couple of litres of water with a pH of 5.0. The rest of the bag will be filled with oxygen and sealed up. That bag is then put inside another bag and sealed up. The bag of fish is then put into a white foam esky, which is then sealed up.

When the fish get to the new country, the eskies might be checked by customs/ quarantine to make sure there are only fish in them. In Australia all the eskies are opened and every bag of fish is visually inspected by a quarantine officer. If no snails, plants or unusual fish are found, the fish are released to the importer. This inspection process takes place at the airport and can take 5 or 6 hours, sometimes longer. This means the fish are in the bags for longer.

Once the fish have been released by customs/ quarantine, they are put in a vehicle and driven to the importers holding tanks. At the importers facility, the bags of fish are left to float in the quarantine tanks. When the temperatures have become similar the bags are opened and some tank water and oxygen is added to the bags and they are sealed back up. Eventually the fish are poured into nets held over large containers and the toxic ammonia filled water is poured into the containers, and the net full of fish is added to an aquarium. After all the fish are put into the quarantine tanks, the containers of ammonia filled water are disinfected with chlorine to kill anything in it.

There are usually several hundred bags of fish and sometimes thousands of bags of fish that come in the same shipment so it can take many hours to open each bag and put the fish into the tanks. We use to start work at 8am and a shipment of fish would arrive at 12 noon. There were lots of shipments of fish that we would still be putting fish into tanks at 2am the following day.

The quarantine tanks are bare glass aquariums with no substrate, plants, ornaments or picture on the back. It is just a bar glass tank with a filter and airstone. At this stage the fish have been in bags for around 24-48 hours, sometimes longer.

The fish spend the next few weeks in the quarantine tanks where they recover from their trip and are treated for diseases. When the fish are cleared from quarantine and are allowed to be sold, they are caught, bagged up, put in eskies and sent to shops around the country. Some importers have to hold fish for longer than 2 weeks, in Australia we have to quarantine all fish for 4 weeks. In the US it is my understanding they don't have to quarantine fish at all, but most importers do just to let the fish settle and recover a bit.

After all this the fish get sent to pet shops and are put into new tanks with gravel and maybe some plants and ornaments and they live there until they die from disease or get bought by someone. If they get bought by someone, the fish are caught again (often within a few hours or days of being put into the tank), bagged up and sent home where they get put into a fish tank that might have been cycled and might have completely different water to where the fish was bred in Asia.

This all happens within a few weeks. One day the fish is swimming around a pond in Asia, and a couple of weeks later it is in a 2ft tank at someone's house, where the water is completely different to where the fish grew up. And quite often that water is completely different to what the fish's ancestors evolved in out in the wild.

All of this catching, moving, flying to different countries, going into different tanks, being exposed to extremely low pH levels and very high ammonia levels, starving, being overcrowded, bouncing around in the back of a hot metal truck, and generally treated like crap, takes its toll on the fish. It's amazing that the number of fish that die during this process is so low, generally around 10-20% of the fish sent out from fish farms die during this period, going from fish farm to the pet shop where you buy them. Potentially more die at the pet shop and at people's homes but most fish actually survive the process. Unfortunately the cumulative effects of this travel and rehoming and travel and rehoming does take its toll on fish and many die a few months after they get to your house. They die from stress caused by the damage associated with the low pH, high ammonia, and everything else linked to the experience.

If you can get locally bred fish, they usually do a lot better than imported fishes. And if you can breed the fish at your own home, the babies usually do very well purely due to the lack of stress.
 
Last edited:
Algae Wafers don't cause problems to fish unless they are left uneaten and cause ammonia problems, but you get ammonia from any uneaten food, be it flake, pellet, or frozen foods that sit on the bottom of the tank.

--------------------------
Mollies and other livebearers are just a weak group of fish due to inbreeding. They are regularly infested with intestinal worms and gill flukes, and quite often have external protozoan infections caused by overcrowding at the breeders, importers and pet shop. Once the fish have been cleaned up and are free of these diseases, they usually recover and do well. However, sometimes the fish are just too weak due to the stresses of being shipped half way around the world, being put into numerous different tanks with different water chemistry, caught repeatedly in nets, bagged up, given strange food and basically having their lives turned upside down. Considering what fish go through, it's amazing that any survive.

Most fish deaths in aquariums are a combination of stress from poor water quality, over crowding, lack of food, low oxygen levels, sudden changes in pH, and diseases.

I will give you a run down of how most aquarium fish make it to local pet shops where they can be bought.

Most aquarium fish come from fish farms in Asia. They are grown in outdoor ponds using whatever water is available. It might be river water, rain water, well water of even sewerage. Thousands of fish are kept in these ponds for several months while they grow. They are extremely overcrowded in the ponds. They get fed flake, pellets and live foods like daphnia. The daphnia and other live foods are often grown in sewerage ponds. These conditions where the fish are grown cause the fish to become infested with intestinal worms, gill flukes, protozoan parasites and various other disease organisms.

The ponds the fish are grown in don't always have the best water chemistry for the species. Many livebearers are grown in rain water and salt (sodium chloride) is added to the water to stop them dying. Whilst this can keep the fish alive, it isn't the best for them in the long run.

When the fish are big enough to be sold, they are netted out of the pond with big drag nets. They are put into plastic storage containers or buckets and left in the sun for however long it takes to get all the fish out of the pond. The buckets do not normally have aeration and a 40 litre (10 gallon) plastic storage container that is half full of water, might contain several hundred adult mollies. It's basically a container of liquid fish. These containers of fish are then taken to a shed where the fish are sorted. This usually entails a group of children and women sitting around buckets of fish, catching them out one at a time with a spoon, and putting them into other buckets of water. The fish are sorted by size, colour, fins, etc. While the fish are being sorted and fasted they do have aeration.

After the sorting process they are usually fasted for 24 hours before being bagged up and sent to an exporter.

Lots of fish are put into each bag with only a small amount of water and the bag is filled with oxygen. Think 50 adult mollies in a couple of litres of water sealed up in a plastic shopping bag. The fish are in these bags for anywhere up to 24 hours or more while they travel from the fish farm to the exporter. Normally the fish are taken to the exporter by vehicle and many of the roads are dirt roads that have lots of bumps and potholes in them. The fish that are overcrowded in the bags, often bounce around in the back of a truck while they are driven to the exporters. This is also in tropical Asia where the temperature can get pretty hot, 40C (104F). There is not normally any airconditioning in these vehicles or the packing facilities at the fish farm. Basically there will be a family with kids and adults working outdoors or under a tin roof.

While the fish are in the bags, the pH drops to really low levels (sometimes it drops below a pH of 5.0). The ammonia levels go up but the toxicity of the ammonia is minimised by the low pH. However, the low pH and ammonia still harms the fish.

At one of the importers I worked at, we tested the pH of the water in bags of fish that had just arrived in Australia, and the pH in some bags was as low as 3.8. Battery acid in a car battery has a pH of about 3.0 and will dissolve paint. So a pH of 3.8 is paint stripper or battery acid and yet there were live fish in these bags.

When the fish get to the exporters, they are acclimatised to tanks and the pH is gradually increased a bit but not too much. The fish are held at the exporters in overstocked tanks until they are required for an order that will be sent overseas to the US, UK, Australia or somewhere else. The fish are not fed much while at the exporters. The exporters tanks are usually bare glass aquariums with no substrate, ornaments, plants or picture on the back.

When an order has been received, the fish are fasted for another 24 hours before being bagged up, put in eskies and sent to the airport where they get loaded onto an aircraft and flown to a different country. When fish are shipped by plane they are very heavily packed. You might have 100 mollies in a couple of litres of water with a pH of 5.0. The rest of the bag will be filled with oxygen and sealed up. That bag is then put inside another bag and sealed up. The bag of fish is then put into a white foam esky, which is then sealed up.

When the fish get to the new country, the eskies might be checked by customs/ quarantine to make sure there are only fish in them. In Australia all the eskies are opened and every bag of fish is visually inspected by a quarantine officer. If no snails, plants or unusual fish are found, the fish are released to the importer. This inspection process takes place at the airport and can take 5 or 6 hours, sometimes longer. This means the fish are in the bags for longer.

Once the fish have been released by customs/ quarantine, they are put in a vehicle and driven to the importers holding tanks. At the importers facility, the bags of fish are left to float in the quarantine tanks. When the temperatures have become similar the bags are opened and some tank water and oxygen is added to the bags and they are sealed back up. Eventually the fish are poured into nets held over large containers and the toxic ammonia filled water is poured into the containers, and the net full of fish is added to an aquarium. After all the fish are put into the quarantine tanks, the containers of ammonia filled water are disinfected with chlorine to kill anything in it.

There are usually several hundred bags of fish and sometimes thousands of bags of fish that come in the same shipment so it can take many hours to open each bag and put the fish into the tanks. We use to start work at 8am and a shipment of fish would arrive at 12 noon. There were lots of shipments of fish that we would still be putting fish into tanks at 2am the following day.

The quarantine tanks are bare glass aquariums with no substrate, plants, ornaments or picture on the back. It is just a bar glass tank with a filter and airstone. At this stage the fish have been in bags for around 24-48 hours, sometimes longer.

The fish spend the next few weeks in the quarantine tanks where they recover from their trip and are treated for diseases. When the fish are cleared from quarantine and are allowed to be sold, they are caught, bagged up, put in eskies and sent to shops around the country. Some importers have to hold fish for longer than 2 weeks, in Australia we have to quarantine all fish for 4 weeks. In the US it is my understanding they don't have to quarantine fish at all, but most importers do just to let the fish settle and recover a bit.

After all this the fish get sent to pet shops and are put into new tanks with gravel and maybe some plants and ornaments and they live there until they die from disease or get bought by someone. If they get bought by someone, the fish are caught again (often within a few hours or days of being put into the tank), bagged up and sent home where they get put into a fish tank that might have been cycled and might have completely different water to where the fish was bred in Asia.

This all happens within a few weeks. One day the fish is swimming around a pond in Asia, and a couple of weeks later it is in a 2ft tank at someone's house, where the water is completely different to where the fish grew up. And quite often that water is completely different to what the fish's ancestors evolved in out in the wild.

All of this catching, moving, flying to different countries, going into different tanks, being exposed to extremely low pH levels and very high ammonia levels, starving, being overcrowded, bouncing around in the back of a hot metal truck, and generally treated like crap, takes its toll on the fish. It's amazing that the number of fish that die during this process is so low, generally around 10-20% of the fish sent out from fish farms die during this period, going from fish farm to the pet shop where you buy them. Potentially more die at the pet shop and at people's homes but most fish actually survive the process. Unfortunately the cumulative effects of this travel and rehoming and travel and rehoming does take its toll on fish and many die a few months after they get to your house. They die from stress caused by the damage associated with the low pH, high ammonia, and everything else linked to the experience.

If you can get locally bred fish, they usually do a lot better than imported fishes. And if you can breed the fish at your own home, the babies usually do very well purely due to the lack of stress.
Off topic, do mollies like sand better or gravel. I honestly hate gravel because a lot of the sinking food gets lost into it, if so what brand would you recommend.
 
Mollies are a mid to surface dwelling fish and don't care about sand or gravel. You can use whichever you prefer. If you have bottom dwelling fishes like catfish and loaches, they do best with sand, but mollies don't care one way or the other.

I used natural brown gravel in most of my tanks but I also used course river sand or beach sand in some of them. However, Byron recommends a different sand, so probably best to ask him unless you live near a clean beach where you can collect a bucket of sand for your tank.
 
Mollies are a mid to surface dwelling fish and don't care about sand or gravel. You can use whichever you prefer. If you have bottom dwelling fishes like catfish and loaches, they do best with sand, but mollies don't care one way or the other.

I used natural brown gravel in most of my tanks but I also used course river sand or beach sand in some of them. However, Byron recommends a different sand, so probably best to ask him unless you live near a clean beach where you can collect a bucket of sand for your tank.
I gave him some sweet peas this morning and heā€™s getting better not sure if heā€™s fixing himself or if the peas are actually helping. Iā€™m so happy now
 
Mollies naturally have a lot of plant matter in their diet so peas would probably help. If you increase the lighting on the tank by an hour or 2 each day it will encourage green algae to grow on the glass and ornaments and they will eat that too.
 

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