Poorly Molly

I just noticed her this morning. I haven’t added anything new into the tank in months. Can anyone identify what this might be? Some sort of fungal infection I think. I haven’t tested the water yet as I had to come to work but I’ll do that tonight along with a big water change and tank clean.
What’s the best course of action? TIA.

It's excess mucous produced by the fish in response to something bad in the water that is irritating it. It's a water quality issue or something toxic in the water because the excess mucous is covering the entire fish. If the mucous only covered one area it would be a wound or external protozoan infection.

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FIRST AID FOR FISH
Test the water for ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, pH and GH. Post results in numbers.

Wipe the inside of the glass down with a clean fish sponge. This removes the biofilm on the glass and the biofilm will contain lots of harmful bacteria, fungus, protozoans and various other microscopic life forms.

Do a 75% water change and gravel clean the substrate every day for a week. The water changes and gravel cleaning will reduce the number of disease organisms in the water and provide a cleaner environment for the fish to recover in. It also removes a lot of the gunk and this means any medication can work on treating the fish instead of being wasted killing the pathogens in the gunk.
Make sure any new water is free of chlorine/ chloramine before it is added to the tank.

Clean the filter if it hasn't been done in the last 2 weeks. However, if the filter is less than 6 weeks old, do not clean it. Wash the filter materials/ media in a bucket of tank water and re-use the media. Tip the bucket of dirty water on the garden/ lawn. Cleaning the filter means less gunk and cleaner water with fewer pathogens so any medication (if needed) will work more effectively on the fish.

Increase surface turbulence/ aeration to maximise the dissolved oxygen in the water.

If there's no improvement after a couple of big water changes, add some salt.

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SALT
Using Salt to Treat Fish Health Issues.
For some fish diseases you can use salt (sodium chloride) to treat the ailment rather than using a chemical based medication. Salt is relatively safe and is regularly used in the aquaculture industry to treat food fish for diseases. Salt has been successfully used to treat minor fungal and bacterial infections, as well as a number of external protozoan infections. Salt alone will not treat whitespot (Ichthyophthirius) or Velvet (Oodinium) but will treat most other types of external protozoan infections in freshwater fishes. Salt can treat early stages of hole in the head disease caused by Hexamita but it needs to be done in conjunction with cleaning up the tank. Salt can also be used to treat anchor worm (Lernaea), fish lice (Argulus), gill flukes (Dactylogyrus), skin flukes (Gyrodactylus), Epistylis, Microsporidian and Spironucleus infections.

You can add rock salt (often sold as aquarium salt), swimming pool salt, or any non iodised salt (sodium chloride) to the aquarium at the dose rate of 1 heaped tablespoon per 20 litres (5 gallons) of water. If there is no improvement after 48 hours you can double that dose rate so there is 2 heaped tablespoons of salt per 20 litres.

If you only have livebearers (guppies, platies, swordtails, mollies), goldfish or rainbowfish in the tank you can double that dose rate, so you would add 2 heaped tablespoons per 20 litres and if there is no improvement after 48 hours, then increase it so there is a total of 4 heaped tablespoons of salt per 20 litres.

Keep the salt level like this for at least 2 weeks but no longer than 4 weeks otherwise kidney damage can occur. Kidney damage is more likely to occur in fish from soft water (tetras, Corydoras, angelfish, Bettas & gouramis, loaches) that are exposed to high levels of salt for an extended period of time, and is not an issue with livebearers, rainbowfish or other salt tolerant species.

The salt will not affect the beneficial filter bacteria but the higher dose rate (4 heaped tablespoons per 20 litres) will affect some plants and some snails. The lower dose rate (1-2 heaped tablespoons per 20 litres) will not affect fish, plants, shrimp or snails.

After you use salt and the fish have recovered, you do a 10% water change each day for a week using only fresh water that has been dechlorinated. Then do a 20% water change each day for a week. Then you can do bigger water changes after that. This dilutes the salt out of the tank slowly so it doesn't harm the fish.

If you do water changes while using salt, you need to treat the new water with salt before adding it to the tank. This will keep the salt level stable in the tank and minimise stress on the fish.

When you first add salt, add the salt to a small bucket of tank water (2 litres or 1/2 gallon) and dissolve the salt. Then slowly pour the salt water into the tank near the filter outlet. Add the salt over a couple of minutes.

Thanks for the post @Colin_T I really appreciate your help.
With regards to the salt treatment, I go on holiday for a week in 12 days and although I have someone to check in and feed the fish while I’m away, I don’t think I can trust them with a water change or ask them to come over every day.
If I do daily water changes with salt every day up until I go, can I leave the tank with salt water while I’m away or would you suggest the few days running up to holiday to dilute it back to fresh?

Do a water change and gravel clean each day for a few days and see how it looks. If it has improved a lot, don't bother adding the salt. If it's still bad after a few water changes, post another picture and add some salt and leave it in there for 1 to 2 weeks.

If you get someone to feed the fish, measure out how much food you give them and put it into single bags or containers. Tell the person to only feed one bag each day, or every second day is better unless you have baby fish. Baby fish need food each day but the adults can go for a week without food. Normally if people are going away for a week, we suggest not bothering to get someone to feed them unless the person knows what they are doing. More people lose fish from overfeeding than starvation.

@Colin_T ok great, thank you.

To be honest I’m not being very fair, the friend that is coming over to feed also keeps fish so I’m sure he would be quite capable of doing a water change however I can’t expect him to drop everything in his life to come over every day

I feed my lot every other day/ every two days anyway and don’t have any baby fish, the week we’re away he will probably come over to feed them only once or twice.

I’ll do a daily water change and gravel clean from today up until Sunday and will let you know how the situation progresses.

Thanks again

Make sure you gravel clean the substrate whenever you do a water change, and clean the filter too.
Make sure any new water is free of chlorine/ chloramine before it's added to the tank.

Make sure any buckets and hoses are free of chemicals and only used for the fish.

Make sure you don't have anything on your skin that can wash off into the water (hand sanitiser residue, moisturising cream, oil, grease, soap residue, etc).

Hi @Colin_T

I did I very thorough clean last night. It was roughly 75% water change as recommended, vacuumed what I could of the substrate, which was a lot but was hindered by the plants a little but went over it at least twice. I cleaned the glass thoroughly. Cleaned the whole filtration system media and removed most of the mucky water from the filtration system.
I must have spent a good hour and a half on it.
I will do the same again tonight.

But I just wanted to let you know after 24hrs she’s looking much better already. Her fins are no longer clamped, no more mucous and a lot more active than yesterday. The white you can see on her body is her natural colouring and has always been there. So I’m relieved

Stupidly I forgot to do a water test before the clean yesterday so I won’t have an exact idea on what the parameters were to have caused this, but I’ll do a test in a mo to make sure.

It was hard trying to get decent pictures because she wouldn’t stop moving

Water test results as of now (pre 2nd water change)

Second water change underway



Filtration system nice and clear



Back to full again

A definite improvement of the molly since the first pictures. Hopefully a full improvement soon!

I'm not sure if you are, but you don't have to clean the filter every day. The filter should be done just in case it's dirty. After that a normal established filter should be cleaned at least once a month.

When you gravel clean the substrate, leave an inch or two of undisturbed substrate around the base of the plants so you don't damage the roots. You want to clean as much of the substrate as possible but not damage the plant's roots in the process.

She does look a lot better after the water change and filter clean so you won't need to add salt. Just do a few more big water changes (maybe every second day for a week) and then do a 75% water change and gravel clean once a week after that.

Thanks again for your advice @Colin_T

I didn’t clean the filter again last night I was just showing a pic of how clean it looked I will keep on top of this in future perhaps it was the gunky filter causing the issue with the water.

I will do water changes going forward as you recommend and hopefully won’t have to worry about going on holiday now!!

The biggest cause of diseases in established aquariums is a dirty filter and dirty substrate. Keeping those clean significantly reduces the chance of the fish getting health problems. And if there is a problem, cleaning those can usually help.