Fish sickness... need help!

J

Jennikofer

Registered Member
Mar 13, 2006
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Hello... I am new to this forum and excited to find it for help when I need it. To start off with we have had our tank since Christmas..it finally got all settled down from the stages it has to go through and the water was fine. Ammonia has been up slightly since then.

Since then we keep watching our fish die off.. it must be something contagious cuz they are slowly all getting it. First we had a molly that had some white stuff on her and was doing the shimmy thing. The shimmy stopped and now she just plain doesn't look to great. Her tail is always lower than the rest of her body. Since then other fish have had holes in their fins.... a few fish have had white stuff (like cotton) on their body. THese have pretty much all died. Also their shape doesn't look quite right.. I think their stomachs are slightly bloated. I swear some of them had smaller stomachs than normal though. Then the other day we had a boy molly that had a totally bent spine... it looks painful... trying to swim with his tail all bent up by his side.

I am so confused by all of this. We had a tank before we moved... it was a wonderful tank and after the initial first 2 months it was great and we had not problems. This one is just a mess. It is a 55 gallon tank. My husband has recently started feeding them bloodworms.. could this be the cause? Also we have really crappy hard water around here but we have a water softener that fixes that. My husband changes 1/3 the water probably once every 2 weeks.

Any help or ideas would be appreciated. If you have any idea what this could be... if maybe it is more than one thing I would really appreciate it. ANY advice is wonderful!! Thanks in advance.
 
Hi, sorry to hear of your problems. You need to tell us more. Water parameters. What are your ph, ammonia, nitrite and nitrate numbers? How many fish do you have? You could be overstocked. I do 6 water changes a month on my 55 gallon. Once every two weeks does not sound like it's enough. When you have bad water, fish will fall victim to alot of things. Most commonly ich and fungus. Sometimes, they or other fish are carriers of other diseases and with the stress of the bad water, their immune systems will be compromised thus making them susceptible to all sorts of things. Give us more information to work on.
Take care,
Mary.
 
The cottony stuff does certainly sound like some sort of fungus thing. Usually fungal infections like that, particularly ones that are recurring, are indicative of poor water quality. So right off, I have a hunch that you'll need to do water changes more frequently, and probably in larger amounts. What about this other "white stuff" you saw on the female molly? What did that look like, exactly? You wouldn't happen to have any pictures of the infected fish, would you? >_o

What else besides mollies are living in the tank right now? As has already been said, you may be overstocked, which would explain why your water quality may be less than ideal, and may also explain the slight rise in ammonia you've noticed.
 
I am not sure of the levels right now. Last we checked they were all normal. I will get those checked today and try and let you know. As far as the amount of fish there are not that many for the size of tank. We have 5 small bloodfins, 2 mollies (both seem on their way out), 3 guppies (we have lost a few), 3 little Neons, a frog, a plecostomus (spelling?) and we just had a bunch of baby mollies... I think there are about 30 left.. but they are in a baby tank that is inside the large 55 gallon tank. Gee... writing those down made me realize we have more fish than I thought. :) Anyway.. thanks for your help. I will get the levels to you today.
Jennifer
 
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