Dalmatian Molly

[Galaxygal21]

Today I got two Dalmatian Molly, male and female. I had a tank cycled and ready to put new fish in. I acclimated them and added them in. One of them seem fine but the other doesn't. I thought maybe it was my water or maybe it got hurt along the way home.

But I noticed something. This fish kept staying at the bottom of the tank and wasn't swimming all too much. I thought he had swim bladder issues until I took a closer look. One of his fins seems weird, kind of deformed. This might be the reason why he can't swim well but if anyone notices anything I'm missing please tell!

 

[Demeter32]

Could you get a head on or perhaps top view picture of the fin? Even if it were deformed it wouldn't effect the fish too much, I suspect it to be an infection of sorts. It looks rather fuzzy and white to me, which could either be fungal or bacterial.

 

[Colin_T]

The fish in the picture is a male marble molly and could have issues with the water. Mollies require hard alkaline water. If the general hardness (GH) is less than 250ppm they have issues and if the pH is less than 7.0 they have issues. Also any ammonia or nitrite will cause problems to them.

Can you test the water for ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, pH and GH and post the results here. The results should be something like ammonia 0.25, nitrite 0.5, nitrate 20, pH 7.6 and GH 170ppm.

If you don't have test kits take a glass full of tank water to the pet shop and ask them to test the water for you. Some pet shops do free water testing and others charge a small fee to cover the cost of the test kits. When you get the results post them here.

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What else is in the tank?
If you only have the mollies you can add 2 heaped tablespoons of rock salt, sea salt or swimming pool salt per 20 litres of water. If there is no improvement after 48 hours you can double that dose so there is 4 heaped tablespoons of salt per 20 litres.

If you have other fish in the tank then only add 1 heaped tablespoon of salt per 20 litres.

Keep the salt level like this for 2 weeks and see how the fish does.

To work out the volume of water in the tank:
measure length x width x height in cm.
divide by 1000.
= volume in litres.

When you measure the height, measure from the top of the gravel to the top of the water level.

There is a calculator/ converter in the "How To Tips" at the top of this page that will let you convert litres to gallons.

 

[Galaxygal21]

They aren't very good pictures but you can see one of his fins is normal and the other is very small and white. Might be a fungal infection but how come his fin is small? Will it grow back during treatment? Do I have to make any adjustments for him?