Molly not eating, spitting out food constantly.

N

Nate55

AC Members
Jun 4, 2018
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Western Washington State
As the title suggests, I have a female molly in a 10 gallon with a male who's not eating. I've had them for close to a month now, but yesterday I put in a divider because the male was attacking her. He eats a lot and will even nip at my finger. But she is shy and doesn't go for food and when I have seen her eat, she spits it out immediately. She doesn't look pregnant, but also doesn't look skinny or really even in poor health. I'm puzzled and want her to get the nutrients she needs. I feed them different foods daily, blood worms, Tetra granules and flakes, as well as New Life Spectrum pellets which have Antarctic krill. The
ammonia has been at a steady 0 and I don't have nitrite/nitrate tests but they should be good because I do 30% water changes weekly. I really don't want her to end up dying.
 
Are these the only 2 fish in this 10g tank? If so, ~30% WWC may be sufficient, but impossible to know without a liquid test kit for nitrate.

I would do more like a 75% WWC given it's only 10g to begin with, feed less, increase water temp a bit and monitor. If it's something bacterial, this *should* speed things along. If it's viral, it could go the other way...
 
Unless it's a badly neglected tank, where the water parameters have changed to the point of a big pH shift compared to your source water, large water changes are always beneficial. There is nothing beneficial to old tank water.
 
FreshyFresh said:
Unless it's a badly neglected tank, where the water parameters have changed to the point of a big pH shift compared to your source water, large water changes are always beneficial. There is nothing beneficial to old tank water.
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Alright, thank you... But now I am very confused/concerned when I went to look at her this morning, she seemed noticeably slimmer. And when I looked at the substrate in her section there seemed to be undeveloped eggs on the ground and I also noticed a small fry struggling on the ground. When will she start to eat again? I'm assuming she aborted her pregnancy because of the stress of the male and then being divided in an already small tank. I should've never listened to the guy at Petco who said mollies would be great for a 10 gal. But what should I do from this point forward? I start a new job on thursday.
 
Some fry will make it if there's sufficient places for them to hide. No place to hide and they'll usually get eaten. All you can do is keep up on water changes and or re-home them.

That's the problem with keeping livebearers. If you aren't equipped to deal with lots of babies, you can get overrun with them.

I do like a few livebearers in community tanks equipped for them, but it's best to keep all same sex IMO.
 
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