could this be fungus?

invisible1130

AC Members
Feb 18, 2006
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I just bought 4 black mollies on Saturday - 2 have died so far. They look like they have white fuzzy stuff on them. Is this fungus? If so...what can I treat that with? One more question...one of the mollies just had babies; should I remove the babies and treat just the 2 adults OR is there a chance they all have this and the whole tank should be treated? (sorry for the multiple questions).

10 gallon tank
0 ammonia
0 nitrites
.25 nitrate
7.8 PH
 
White fuzzy stuff certainly sounds like a kind of fungus to me, but check this site out here and look at the pictures. It may help you diagnose your problem: http://www.2cah.com/pandora/Disease.html

My betta had fungus a while back, but he pulled through. I had good luck with simply keeping his water immaculately clean and dosing with Pima/Melafix. Increasing his water temperature a bit seemed to help, too.

I think if you went this route, the fry would be okay, since the 'Fix family of medications seems to be relatively mild. I'm not sure about that, though. I think you would be okay to remove the fry to be on the safe side, as I am under the impression that fungus isn't something that requires a whole-tank treatment, per se, beyond maintaining ultra-clean water conditions.

Maracyn medications seem to be highly recommended, too. Medications like that and others by Jungle et al. may be harsher on the fry, though. But again, I'm not certain. The most important thing is to keep the water really clean, I think.

ETA: It just occurred to me now that I should clarify what I mean when I say that my betta had fungus-- what he had was probably Columnaris, and I suspect that's what your mollies have as well. However, I'm somewhat in the habit of just referring to it as "fungus". Body fungus and columnaris are actually different diseases, but are so frequently confused with one another in layman discourse that they're nearly interchangeable in my mind unless one wants to speak very precisely. So yes, do look at the Columnaris section of that site I linked to. Sorry to be so utterly confusing.
 
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If you have a place to move the fry, do it just to be in the safe side.
 
Please move the fry out of the tank with the adult mollies. For one thing,I have seen adult mollies eat thier own fry and believe me they will. Also I do not think you should medicate the fry. They probably cannot handle it. Once you remove the fry from the tank, you can treat the main tank. It has been my experience that if this is a fungus, Marycn will probably do the trick.Just make sure that you remove any carbon from the system before treatment unless otherwise stated. Carbon will pull the meds. out of the water. Of course after treatment is done, do a water change and then replace the carbon back into the system to pull out the remainder of the meds. Hope this helps.

Hang in there!

Marinemom
 
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