Please Help.....

One of my Molly's one fin looks very strange, it is shorter than it was, and the side of its body looks almost like it was scraped somewhere, which I cant understand as there isn't really anywhere it could have done that, there are white particles on the fin too, could it be a disease, what can I do???

 

trying to google what could be wrong... it looks like it is bleeding from the inside... ...

 

It could have ick,it prob tried to scrape itself somewhere rough because it irritates him.

Your best bet is to add it to a quarantine tank and add 1 teaspoon of aquarium salt for every 30Lto the quarantine tank until you know what desease/parasite you are dealing with .The aquarium salt will help with healing and kill any parasites the molly may have.

 

thanks for replying, but it is unfortunately too late my molly died... it was white, and I could not see any white spots on it until I noticed the fin (reading up about ick on the net now), he was fine this morning and then in the late afternoon he looked like his left hand side fin looked shorter and had white spots and it looked like it had scraped the side of its body, then when I checked again, it had what looked like internal bleeding and there was a red pocket on its side very sad indeed....this can be quite a heart wrenching business!

2 questions, what are the chances of the other fish getting the same thing? should I use some anti ick that I got from the LPS and treat the water now just incase? and 2. Is it fine to use aquarium salt if my tank is a freshwater tank with no salt? (the LPS has not informed me about anything regarding salt yet?)
Many Thanks,
Candice

Ok I just read its contagious, and that I should treat the water... going to go and do that now... I don't know what I did wrong

 

You should'nt treat the water with ick medication until you know if it is ick.

 

ah ok, so I shouldn't. ok... so I just leave it until I see if it happens again?

 

Answer:1.Ick is contagious,but you should make sure that they actually have ick before treating them with anti-ick medication.(only treat the fish that have ick in your quarantine tank)

2.aquarium salt should not be added to the main tank,just the quarantine tank for treating deseases and speeding up healing.

(aquarium salt and table salt is not the same thing)

 

http://www.tropicalaquarium.co.za/showthread.php?t=3088

 

Thanks Stormer, for now I have just replaced the floss in the filter, leaving a little behind with the good bacteria, and changed the charcoal at the bottom too. I have learned something very important here, I don't have a quarantine tank, only the one I just recently bought with my fish in it, going to have to get another tank for just in case then, as well as heater and filter & pump, basically the whole set up again, otherwise I am not going to be able to quarantine them if something happens... is this standard practice?

 

yeah,you should always have a spare tank incase something happens.if you buy new fish you add them to the spare tank for 2 weeks before adding them to the main tank to make sure they don't have any desease,if one of your tanks break you at least have a spare tank to place them in,quarantining a fish so that his desease doesn't spread to other fish,ect

 

Thanks for the link - Zoom says to do a 50-70% water change, if it is ick, I still dont know, the others are all fine it seems.... but from reading about it and what you said about him scratching himself against something as he was irritated, is exactly how it looked at first, I actually did a 30% water change earlier, so I will do another in the morning to be safe... have to add my weekly organic aqua tomorrow anyway and will do a gravel clean at the same time... thank you for helping me.

 

Sounds like a plan... I bought live plants for the tank and the one came in a basket which the LPS said I must leave in the basket and put straight in the tank... I have now taken it out the basket as it had this foamy stuff which was full of what ever was going on in their tank, and have 'planted it' in the gravel (looks better now too!)... think this may have been an issue as it is contagious and who's to say that tank did not have it... are they supposed to stock live plants they sell in tanks that they are keeping fish in? I would think they should have a separate tank, so as not to spread disease if there happens to be any....

 

They usually stock plants and fish together,it's not bad.Most LPS don't care about the fish and plants they sell,as long as they live long enough to be sold.It's also not a good idea to take advice from LPS since they are only looking to make a sale.they might sell you 2 fish which are not compatible and tell you they will be fine,once the fish die you will prob go back to the LPS and the LPS might sell you more fish which may also not be compatible.
thats how they make money.( they would be broke if you only went once a month to buy fish food)

 

ok so its normal then, fortunately my LPS said he would replace any fish that died in the first 3 weeks free of charge.

 

Hi Aqua.

There are all kinds of disease in our tanks but they are normally harmless untill for some reason the fish get weak or injured and its immune system cant keep the disease at bay anymore.

It might be that you molly had a run in with one of the other fish and the other one injured him. i think of the fish you have the molly would end up at the bottom if a fight broke out.

Usually when fish get stressed they would easily pick up ick or fin rot. Ick should not be a problem to fix but fin rot can be very lethal and quickly to.
Do make sure you get a quarantine tank.
Fin rot may start of with the fin looking a bit blood shot and then you will see the fin slowly disappear.

With regards to your angel thats hiding. I think I mentioned that I had the exact setup as you with 3 angels. the one angel also turned dominant and intimidated the other the same way to the point were they died of stress and bacause they would not eat.
Check that you angel eat when you fead them or you would have to make a drastic plan.

 

Thanks Vis, I thought I would keep the 30lt tank as the quarantine tank and I found the perfect place in my living room where I can fit a 1400 x 900 x 400 tank on a stand, how many lt's would that be?? I'm going to go and see if I can find the info on google then going to see where I can get one that size and how much they cost... once I have found the tank, then I am going to ask on here what filter to get for that tank as well as all the other accessories so its done right the first time around

 

ok so apparently its 504 lt's - so I can probably look at something smaller than that, dont want to play with the big boys just yet... still too new to this, I just want to make sure my fish I do have survive and grow and are happy, and that I have a quarantine tank - maybe 200 lt tank, then that should house at least 25 fish of 10cm in size (which most wont be) - according to tetra who state you can have 2 x 2-3cm fish for every 4lt of water, in this case 25 x 10cm fish in 200lt of water , that should be fine for my fish

 

You should actually go for bigger than smaller if you have the money,the bioload will be less in a bigger tank.

 

The bigger the tank the better Aqua.

If something happens in the tank, it's more "diluted" in 500 litres than in 30litres.

Vis hit the nail on the head... I believe the molly was attacked by one of the sharks. They are reknown for nipping.

 

just my 2cents here.
I agree with Vis and Zoom that it might have been another fish that attacked your mollie, why I say so it mollies are really "hard" fish and can take a lot before dieing. they are great fish to put into a tank if you want to cycle the tank.... that been said if you feel that the mollie died because of a decease then I would suggest that you do a 50% water change and maybe turn up the heat 2 degrees that way you kill of a lot of fungus and bad bacteria. That is what I would do just to be safe. and just keep the temp up for 3 or so day and then you can slowly decrees the tmp again.