[Benboone]

So here is my conundrum. I have four mollies in my 29 tall tank with 6 small SAEs. Two of the mollies are black mollies and the other two are gold dust lyre tail mollies. The two black ones are fine, the hang out together and swim all over the tank happily just fine. The other two though are very weird. They sit on the bottom a lot. They are very jumpy when I get close to the tank and swim off and hide. They kind of hover around lazily sometimes. But when I feed them they are up and active like normal. I was worried about them for a while, I even took one out once and put him in a QT tank and treated him with melafix and malachite green (separately obviously) and he didn't really ever change....

So any ideas? They have been like this for awhile and they don't look unhealthy they just act weird. Do I just have lazy fish or what? Lol

 

[Smooch]

Are they being bullied that you're aware of?

 

[Benboone]

Are they being bullied that you're aware of?

Not that I know of. The black mollies pretty much seem to ignore them and they were acting this way well before the 6 SAEs were put in. The SAEs have only been in there a month or two. I veryyyy rarely see the two chasing each other around, but not anything I would call "bullying" and even then not enough to cause them to sit around on the bottom the rest of the time.

 

[Nordic]

Make sure to add a good calcium source, like a crust of barnacles, crushed shell or the like. Mollies can be really hard to keep compared to other livebearers. They can be pretty mean too. Had a good laugh at the LFS the last time I visited. There was this over aggressive platy male chasing all the small black mollies in the tank, then he tried is luck on a big black and white speckled lyretail. Well, the molly turned the tables on him very quickly. Attitude is no defence against hard molly lips.

 

[Benboone]

Cool thanks! I didn't realize they were so aggressive. I've seen them chasing each other but I didn't think it was anything that bad.

I have some cuttlebone for my brackish tank, it has crabs in it. I just put some in my filter maybe that will help some. I also have some pellet food I got from kensfish.com that is supposed to have added calcium. I don't use it a whole lot in that tank though but I know they love the stuff when I do. Maybe il feed them some more of that as well.

 

[Benboone]

So sad/strange news. This morning when I woke up one of the BLACK mollies was sitting on the ground dead there were shrimp crawling all over her. The only thing I can think of that would cause this is I finally got a python water changer thingy yesterday and used it for the first time, and maybe the fish got into some of the chlorine in my water or something before the chemicals could get rid of it? Idk. They all seemed perfectly healthy.

 

[Nordic]

Canary in the mine fish is what they are in my eyes, the first in a community tank to show illness.
time to go through your system with an eyeglass.

How long has the tank been up? could it be we are just dealing with a case of new tank syndrome?

 

[FreshwaterAdvice]

So sad/strange news. This morning when I woke up one of the BLACK mollies was sitting on the ground dead there were shrimp crawling all over her. The only thing I can think of that would cause this is I finally got a python water changer thingy yesterday and used it for the first time, and maybe the fish got into some of the chlorine in my water or something before the chemicals could get rid of it? Idk. They all seemed perfectly healthy.

That's unlikely. There are plenty of people that use a python water changer all the time without issue. If your water just has chlorine instead of chloramines you can try spraying the water in the air before letting it go in your aquarium (hold it some above the water) and that would allow some of the chlorine to outgas. Alternatively, you could try putting in some prime in the water before you add the fresh water but either way I find this to be an unlikely cause of the issue.

Do you have a water test kit you could use to report your ammonia, nitrite, nitrate values.

When in doubt - that is if there is a disease in the aquarium that you don't know - large regular water changes can never hurt.

 

[Benboone]

The tank has been up for months. I have a test kit but for some reason it's saltwater and I don't really have the cash atm to drop 30 bucks on another one.