LauraFrog
Fish Gatherer
Urghhh... this one is SO ANNOYING.
22 gallon tank. It's a molly setup, permanent tankmates 6 bumblebee gobies, but it has at times contained various other things - platys, rainbowfish, a krib. At the moment it's got four sailfin males (two of which look like they're on the way out) and six females plus the bbg.
My water is creek water - soft as, pH 7.4 but quickly drops, and in most of my tanks stabilises at around 6.6 - you'd have to be barking to try to keep sailfin mollies in that, so I use rift lake conditioner at half dosage plus a good amount of sea salt mix. I haven't actually done the maths to figure out the final hardness, but I'm fairly sure it's between 260-300ppm. The salinity I'm not sure about either. The only hydrometer I can get starts at 1.005, and in the water in the molly tank the needle doesn't lift at all. I can work out exactly how much sea salt mix I'm using if that info would help anybody, and also an up to date reading on the water hardness.
Temp is 27C. Ammonia/nitrite are always zero, tank has been cycled for well over a year with a few small hitches (power outages etc.) which have always been rapidly fixed with a few days on ammo-lock. Nitrate is usually around 20-30.
Water changes are 50%/week because the tank is overstocked. Filtration is frankly excessive; air driven (LOTS of air) undergravel plus an overrated power filter.
This is a problem that I keep getting, with most of my livebearers, but it's worst wtih the mollies. They get into my tank. They settle in well, and act happy. Then they start losing weight, no matter what I feed them (usual diet is New Life Spectrum community, bloodworms, peas, blanched lettuce and spinach.) They end up absolutely emaciated, and they still act normal and you wonder how they can possibly be alive because they are so skeletal. In the last few days they rest on the bottom. Then you find the bodies.
I have tried everything. I've dewormed them more times than I care to count (praziquantel.) I've kept Melafix running in the tank (didn't hold out much hope for that - it didn't work.) I've pulled them into a hospital tank and treated with tetracycline (HCl, 375mg/20 litres) - it saved some platys that were showing similar symptoms a few years ago, but produced no improvement whatsoever in the mollies.
The water quality is perfect, and there is no bickering in the tank. There was a recent ammonia spike - I went away, with some of the fish showing symptoms like this. I think one or two of them died while I was away and nobody removed the bodies. When I came back the fish were hanging at the top and breathing fast. The tank really needed a clean - totally infested with black beard algae - so I did it properly. Pulled out the undergravel plates, removed the revolting slime from underneath them, put the gravel back and totally rescaped it. Power filter was undisturbed, ammonia has been reading zero since the big cleanout.
At the moment, two of my males look like they're on the way out. The females all look fine, in fact, most of them are in various states of pregnancy. I'm suspecting fish TB but I just don't know. Does anybody know what's happening?
22 gallon tank. It's a molly setup, permanent tankmates 6 bumblebee gobies, but it has at times contained various other things - platys, rainbowfish, a krib. At the moment it's got four sailfin males (two of which look like they're on the way out) and six females plus the bbg.
My water is creek water - soft as, pH 7.4 but quickly drops, and in most of my tanks stabilises at around 6.6 - you'd have to be barking to try to keep sailfin mollies in that, so I use rift lake conditioner at half dosage plus a good amount of sea salt mix. I haven't actually done the maths to figure out the final hardness, but I'm fairly sure it's between 260-300ppm. The salinity I'm not sure about either. The only hydrometer I can get starts at 1.005, and in the water in the molly tank the needle doesn't lift at all. I can work out exactly how much sea salt mix I'm using if that info would help anybody, and also an up to date reading on the water hardness.
Temp is 27C. Ammonia/nitrite are always zero, tank has been cycled for well over a year with a few small hitches (power outages etc.) which have always been rapidly fixed with a few days on ammo-lock. Nitrate is usually around 20-30.
Water changes are 50%/week because the tank is overstocked. Filtration is frankly excessive; air driven (LOTS of air) undergravel plus an overrated power filter.
This is a problem that I keep getting, with most of my livebearers, but it's worst wtih the mollies. They get into my tank. They settle in well, and act happy. Then they start losing weight, no matter what I feed them (usual diet is New Life Spectrum community, bloodworms, peas, blanched lettuce and spinach.) They end up absolutely emaciated, and they still act normal and you wonder how they can possibly be alive because they are so skeletal. In the last few days they rest on the bottom. Then you find the bodies.
I have tried everything. I've dewormed them more times than I care to count (praziquantel.) I've kept Melafix running in the tank (didn't hold out much hope for that - it didn't work.) I've pulled them into a hospital tank and treated with tetracycline (HCl, 375mg/20 litres) - it saved some platys that were showing similar symptoms a few years ago, but produced no improvement whatsoever in the mollies.
The water quality is perfect, and there is no bickering in the tank. There was a recent ammonia spike - I went away, with some of the fish showing symptoms like this. I think one or two of them died while I was away and nobody removed the bodies. When I came back the fish were hanging at the top and breathing fast. The tank really needed a clean - totally infested with black beard algae - so I did it properly. Pulled out the undergravel plates, removed the revolting slime from underneath them, put the gravel back and totally rescaped it. Power filter was undisturbed, ammonia has been reading zero since the big cleanout.
At the moment, two of my males look like they're on the way out. The females all look fine, in fact, most of them are in various states of pregnancy. I'm suspecting fish TB but I just don't know. Does anybody know what's happening?
