All three of my male mollies, this is so weird... one at a time... it's like their bottom lip swelled up and then fell off, and then they died. Now it looks like one of the girl mollies' lips is doing the same thing. Why is this, and what can I do about it? It's only the mollies that this has happened to.
I asked the pet shop, BTW, and they said, "That happens with mollies."
And while I am asking questions, my pet shop's fish guy told me that I should only do water changes for tropical fish once every three or four weeks! I thought it was 20% change once a week?
Its most likely mout rot, which there are meds available to treat it for, on the other hand though, i'll give you some info on basic tank maintanence and mollys;
a. For any tank, no matter how lightly its stocked, its advised you do at least a 20-30% water change with dechlorinator once a week.
b. Never wash your filter sponge out more than once every 10days and never wash it out in tap water, the chlorine present in tap water kills off your beneficial bacteria that lives in the filter sponge and helps keep your water clean. If you need to wash the filter sponge out, just remove the gunky bits and don't over clean it, clean it out in water from water changes.
c. You will need to add dechlorinator/water conditioner to any water that goes into the tank- dechlorinator is very vital for having a healthy tank and fish and filter.
d. It is highly advised you buy test kits for ammonia, nitrites and nitrates- ammonia and nitrites should be 0 with no exceptions in a mature/cycled tank and nitrates preferably under 40, if nitrites or ammonia rise above 0 at any point in your tank do a water change to help lower them- never take out more than 60% of water though in a single day though.
e. Mollys prefer a temp between 24 and 26degrees, they need veg as well as high protein foods in their diet so feed your mollys algae wafers or blanched bits of cucumber at least once a week to help keep them healthy, as for alternative meaty foods daphinia, bloodworms, tubifex, krill and freezedried river shrimp are readily accepted but don't feed your mollys these foods every day or they'll get constipated, which can be lethal to fish.
f. Mollys need a tank of at least 15gallons as they are very active fish and male sailfin mollys can reach 4inchs long, you need at least 2-3female per male and no less as mollys belong to the livebearer family and males can harrass females too much if there is too few around. If you have females, be prepared for fry- personally though i would not try to save them as you can easily get over run with fry- females mollys can give birth to over 100fry every 2months and their fry take a year to mature, so raising them is a long term project and you will need a big tank to raise the fry in.
Depending on what other fish you have, the use of aquarium salt is also beneficial to mollys although many fish are intolerant of it so if you do use it make sure you don't have any salt intolerant fish in the tank.
Good luck
This is crazy...
/www.thetropicaltank.co.uk/hdcolumn.htm
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