Molly playing dead?!?

secuono

AC Members
Aug 12, 2009
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VA, USA
So I lost the male yellow Molly and the female Dalmatian and now the silver female is playing dead. It swims a bit, eats sometimes and then spends most of it's time at the bottom breathing normally. Today, I found her kinda on her side at the bottom, took her out and put her in a small tub floating in the same tank, water from it's tank too. She was way too easy to catch. She isnt preggo, you can see through her with a good light and nothing's there. Nothing on her looks different and temps 76F, 0.0.5 readings, I don't have a test for the other stuff so don't ask. Nothing's new with the tank and she's been acting funny for awhile now, so is my swordtail, so I'm thinking he will be next to go as well as my tiny yellow Platy fry. For a day, it was standing straight up and kinda shivering, then back to normal. Rest are fine.
 
Sorry. Sounds like something is wrong, but without water test kits, it's hard to narrow it down. Is it old? Any other symptoms? Skin look normal? Gills and cloaca normal?
 
Sorry. Sounds like something is wrong, but without water test kits, it's hard to narrow it down. Is it old? Any other symptoms? Skin look normal? Gills and cloaca normal?
'cloaca'? I only have the API Master test kit.
Old, no idea, might be.
She has a strip of gray in the middle across her dorsal fin, other fish has black tipped fins, seem to be getting better though. I forget if she also had this issue, but the sword and the 2 other mollies that died, had head tremors. This is Nothing like the shimming people keep talking about. It's just the head shaking side to side slightly but very quickly for 5 seconds at most.
 
Well, she's perfectly in the upright position, except he is up-side-down, you know what I mean? She's breathing kinda fast, 3-5 times every second. She seems to be gray instead of her original white/silver. The Betta is swimming around her floating bin, got good pics of both. Post in a sec.
 
"cloaca"=where stuff comes out. Combined anal-vaginal opening on female fish. Any swelling, discoloration or other oddities in this region?

btw my last 2 mollies have expired in the same way you describe. Are yours incredibly thin, like sheet of paper thin, back of the ribcage area? Mine appeared to be eating but just wasted away in a week or so. No visible abnormalities except that thinness.

Other mollies and tetras in the same tank were and continue to be fine.
 
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