Very buoyant mollies

I have four female mollies in my planted tank. Three are white, the
other is mottled black. One white molly is so buoyant at the moment that
her dorsal fin is permanently out of water. She tries to swim down but
is thwarted by the buoyancy. Another white molly seems to have the same
problem, but is less severe. This molly keeps taking air from the
surface and then dives down, pauses, then realises she wants another
gulp and then she's straight back up. The gill activity looks normal on
all. The black molly is behaving normally. All the other fish are
behaving normally, including SAE, angels, otocinclus etc.

The CO2 level could possibly be as high as 30ppm. The plants are
pearling loads. What could be causing the mollies to constantly gulp for
air and getting stuck with too much inside their swimming bladder?

Nikki

Nikki Casali wrote:

I have four female mollies in my planted tank. Three are white, the
other is mottled black. One white molly is so buoyant at the moment that
her dorsal fin is permanently out of water. She tries to swim down but
is thwarted by the buoyancy. Another white molly seems to have the same
problem, but is less severe. This molly keeps taking air from the
surface and then dives down, pauses, then realises she wants another
gulp and then she's straight back up. The gill activity looks normal on
all. The black molly is behaving normally. All the other fish are
behaving normally, including SAE, angels, otocinclus etc.

The CO2 level could possibly be as high as 30ppm. The plants are
pearling loads. What could be causing the mollies to constantly gulp for
air and getting stuck with too much inside their swimming bladder?

All the mollies have now resumed normal behaviour after their bout of
"wind". I'm starting to think that this behaviour is not too abnormal.
I've read that fish sometimes swallow air to aid in digestion. I fed
them dry flakes earlier so this could have been the trigger.

Nikki

Are the fish bloated at all? If so they may need medicine for fish
bloat. One is fungus eliminator by jungle. Good luck and later, sounds
like your fish are o.k. after all.

wrote:
Are the fish bloated at all? If so they may need medicine for fish
bloat. One is fungus eliminator by jungle. Good luck and later, sounds
like your fish are o.k. after all.


Well, they are still experiencing a mild bloating. In the morning they
are fine, but towards the night they become more bloated and are prone
to bobbing on the surface. Strange how it has affected just the three
white mollies and not the black. Is it caused by a fungus? I can switch
on the UV lamp if that would help.

Nikki

In message , Nikki Casali
writes


wrote:
Are the fish bloated at all? If so they may need medicine for fish
bloat. One is fungus eliminator by jungle. Good luck and later, sounds
like your fish are o.k. after all.


Well, they are still experiencing a mild bloating. In the morning they
are fine, but towards the night they become more bloated and are prone
to bobbing on the surface. Strange how it has affected just the three
white mollies and not the black. Is it caused by a fungus? I can switch
on the UV lamp if that would help.

sounds remarkably similar to fancy goldfish being unable to sort their
swimbladder out properly. With gf, any dried food needs to be soaked in
tankwater before feeding, and as much live food as possible & veggies
should be fed. Mine are also very keen on algae wafers just to keep
aquatic greenery in the diet (though at the moment they are happy
guzzling the green hair algae in the tank, gah.)

Swimbladder problems tend to happen with overbred fish, so if these are
fancy mollies that might be it - I don't have any experience of keeping
them, but I don't think it could hurt to try playing about with their
diet a bit.
--
sophie

I've never heard of internal fungus', it's probably either overbred
white mollies (I seem to remember having read that mollies are
naturally black) as stated by sophie, or a bacterial infection, ask
around and maybe try a full dose (so the bacteria doesn't get the
chance to evolve and adapt to the anti-bacteria medicine and become
resistant) of an antibacterial medicine. Remember to research the
medicine before you use it as you might very well ruin/damage a
significant number of lifeforems (including good bacteria) in the
medicated tank and try to use a hospital tank after researching the
pros and cons of such too. Good luck!

sophie wrote:
In message , Nikki Casali
writes



wrote:

Are the fish bloated at all? If so they may need medicine for fish
bloat. One is fungus eliminator by jungle. Good luck and later, sounds
like your fish are o.k. after all.


Well, they are still experiencing a mild bloating. In the morning they
are fine, but towards the night they become more bloated and are prone
to bobbing on the surface. Strange how it has affected just the three
white mollies and not the black. Is it caused by a fungus? I can
switch on the UV lamp if that would help.


sounds remarkably similar to fancy goldfish being unable to sort their
swimbladder out properly. With gf, any dried food needs to be soaked in
tankwater before feeding, and as much live food as possible & veggies
should be fed. Mine are also very keen on algae wafers just to keep
aquatic greenery in the diet (though at the moment they are happy
guzzling the green hair algae in the tank, gah.)

Swimbladder problems tend to happen with overbred fish, so if these are
fancy mollies that might be it - I don't have any experience of keeping
them, but I don't think it could hurt to try playing about with their
diet a bit.

I've been reading this and scratching my head since bloating caused by
internal infections isn't usually worse at night. Diet makes a lot of
sense. Grow some hair algae, Nikki! ;-)

--
__ Elaine T __
__' http://eethomp.com/fish.html '__

Elaine T wrote:
I've been reading this and scratching my head since bloating caused by
internal infections isn't usually worse at night. Diet makes a lot of
sense. Grow some hair algae, Nikki! ;-)

The SAE take care of that too well. The mollies seem to like a bit of
zuchinni. I'll coax them to eat a bit more of it, if it doesn't give
them flatulence instead, lol.

Nikki