cotton growth attacking my adult female molly

[reinhart]

i have 2 mollies, 3 black widow tetras and 1 cory in 10 gal tank

4 or 5 days ago, my big adult molly stopped eating and started sitting at the bottom of the tank.

3 days ago, i did a 30% water change

yesterday i noticed that it's lips/jaws were protruding more

today i came home and found this fish with a large cotton growth encompassing the back end of the fish so that it's caudal fin is smothered in white stuff and is not operational. The fish can only swim by using its front fins. It was actually stuck to the suction action of the automatic filter when i came home. i immediately pulled it from the filter with a net, put in a piece of Fungus Clear (hope it's not too late), and turned the power off on my automatic carbon filter

the molly has bad fin rot on the back fin, and the other adult molly shows no sign of cotton growth but a slight amount of fin rot on the back fin

what should i do?

i have 5 relatively healthy fish. i could kill the molly that has 30% of its body covered in fungus to save the other five fish. maybe the cause of this was an overpopulated tank to begin with. if possible, i would like to save all six fish, but i don't know if that's a realistic plan

 

[my_fallen_angel]

It does sound like fungus.

You should add a little salt or melafix to help the molly along abit

 

[Ruby Shark]

Aww I'm sorry to hear about your fish.

http/www.thetropicaltank.co.uk/hdfungus.htm

Does that sound like what your fish looks like? It lists a good medication to treat it with and says that it will treat most bacterial infections as well "providing a safety net incase of mis-diagnosis."

I am not sure if you should treat your whole tank or not(others would have a better idea) but I would be worried that they are infected as well...just maybe not showing signs as of yet.

 

[reinhart]

part of the growth fell off the fish after i posted this message, but part of the fish's FLESH was attached to it. upon closer inspection, a lot of outer flesh had already been eaten up (yuck).

i immediately euthanized the fish to put it out of it's misery and lower the risk of the second molly getting sick

the second molly has a few dots on its back fin and i'm noticing a tiny amount of fin rot. I'll add another Fungus Clear tomorrow

tonight, i will do a water change and vacuum the gravel with my siphon

to some extent, i'm glad one of my fish died b/c that solved my overstocking problem. Grr i thought i had it under control b/c 2 weeks ago my fish tank was crystalclear.

 

[jams.alaskan]

Sorry you lost the molly but please keep us posted on any new outbreaks.

ALASKA

 

[Ruby Shark]

It sounds like you have a few things going on.

I'm sorry to hear about your fish.