What Happened Here?

[invictor]

Hi all,

So today has been a pretty bad day for me, not only was my dog put down, but my pregnant Molly gave up the ghost some point this afternoon whilst I was at work. She gave birth about midday today to 18 small fry, most of which just sank to the bottom of the fry trap, 4 or 5 did seem to swim around but have now also joined their fellow buddies down there...I presume they are all dead, as I would have thought the least they would be doing is swimming around the bottom of it (this was my first time, also very unexpected first time...)

However, I noticed whilst she was dropping her fry, a red (and slightly yellow) mark appeared on her right side running from fin to fin. It was much more red whilst she was giving birth and afterwards. I've posted a picture below, because I'm wondering what on earth it is? I presume it was the cause of death for her, but was wondering if anyone could help me out identifying the problem.

Thanks again,
Mike.

 

[ChiNA MaN]

looks like internal bleeding a bit is all i can tell

 

[OldMan47]

I wish I could help Invictor but I have never seen that in a molly before. I don't recall ever seeing it in any fish before.

 

[Colin_T]

Normally I would say it was a bad bacterial infection but because it happened when she was giving birth, I would say something bad happened when she was in labour. Something inside her popped and she bled out. She might have had a problem and she gave birth prematurely, which would explain the still births and why the fry aren't swimming around the surface like they should be.

A worse case scenario springs to mind where the female had a Tuberculosis granuloma (infection) inside her body. The granuloma grew on one of her internal organs and eventually joined her egg cavity area (equivalent of a womb) before rupturing it and this caused the premature birth and her subsequent death.

However, any internal bacterial infection could do the same thing, as could a genetic disorder whereby she just wasn’t physically designed to give birth. She might have had an undeveloped organ, which just failed. Mollies are pretty inbred and many have trouble breeding these days due to the poor quality of their genes.