What could be wrong with my female balloon molly?

[Lydscorsab]

Hi everyone,

I'm fairly new to fishkeeping. I started off with a 60litre tank and I've since upgraded to a 105 litre.
In the 105 ltr tank, I have 4 juvenile balloon mollies (they arrived as fry in a bag of adult mollies), 1 pearl gourami, a king tiger pleco and a guppy. I've decided to keep my orange female balloon molly on her own in the 60 ltr tank. The reason for this is because her character completely changed from confident to shy. She's started losing her orange colour and she's always hiding. I've started her on a course of Melafix and removed the carbon filter to see if that makes a difference.
Last week when doing a small water change, i noticed an orange fry hiding in the bog wood... so I'm wondering if she's still in the process of giving birth.
The water nitrate levels are low and there's no ammonia in the water. Any idea what could be causing her to act shy and lose her colour?

 

[AilyNC]

Was she maybe pregnant and trying to find a quiet place to drop fry?

 

[Colin_T]

Hi and welcome to the forum

How long has the tank been set up for?

What is the ammonia, nitrite and nitrate of the tank water?

What is the GH (general hardness), KH (carbonate hardness) and pH of your water supply?
This information can usually be obtained from your water supply company's website or by telephoning them. If they can't help you, take a glass full of tap water to the local pet shop and get them to test it for you. Write the results down (in numbers) when they do the tests. And ask them what the results are in (eg: ppm, dGH, or something else).

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Any chance of a picture and short 30 second video of the fish?
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If the video is too big for this website, post it on YouTube and copy & paste the link here. We can view it at YouTube. If you are using a mobile phone to take the video, have the phone horizontal so the video takes up the entire screen. If you have the phone vertical, you get video in the middle and black on either side.

 

[Lydscorsab]

Thanks for your replies.

Update: I bought some Mickey Mouse Platys at the weekend & put them in with the Balloon Molly to quarantine them before they were housed in the main tank...
The Balloon Molly seems to like the fact that she has other fish species as tank mates and she completely changed! She's come out of hiding and has become sociable again. I think she was just fed up of being pregnant and didn't want to engage with her own species. So, the Mickey Mouse Platys are staying in her tank & she's messed up my plans of it being a quarantine tank LOL. I am happy she's come round - I was worried about her.