Molly death

Ratsa Rutsa - I just had a beautiful male silver sailfin molly pass away in
my 10 gal. I would appreciate some guesses at what went wrong. My 'big 3'
were 0/0/10 two days ago and right after I discovered him. pH 7.5, temp 76.
Filter is a small 100 gph power filter. I have been putting about 1 TBS salt
every 3 weeks during weekly 25-30% water change. It died 7 days after last
change (discovered at water change), exactly one month after I put him in.
No ich or unusual activity. Nothing noticed on post mortem external
examination. The tank mates are (2) 2" platys, a female 2" gold lyretail
molly and (3) 1-1 1/2" blue danios.

I am always trying to hone my knowledge and this is the second death in any
of my 3 tanks during my now 7 month fascination. I would be a somewhat
content to file it in the mystery death file except this is more or less my
quarantine tank. The danios would probably be going elsewhere in a couple
of weeks (2 weeks in tank), except now I am concerned.

Thanxx
Bill

On Sun, 16 Jan 2005 19:59:31 GMT, "Newbie Bill"
wrote:

Ratsa Rutsa - I just had a beautiful male silver sailfin molly pass away in
my 10 gal. I would appreciate some guesses at what went wrong. My 'big 3'
were 0/0/10 two days ago and right after I discovered him. pH 7.5, temp 76.
Filter is a small 100 gph power filter. I have been putting about 1 TBS salt
every 3 weeks during weekly 25-30% water change. It died 7 days after last
change (discovered at water change), exactly one month after I put him in.
No ich or unusual activity. Nothing noticed on post mortem external
examination. The tank mates are (2) 2" platys, a female 2" gold lyretail
molly and (3) 1-1 1/2" blue danios.

I am always trying to hone my knowledge and this is the second death in any
of my 3 tanks during my now 7 month fascination. I would be a somewhat
content to file it in the mystery death file except this is more or less my
quarantine tank. The danios would probably be going elsewhere in a couple
of weeks (2 weeks in tank), except now I am concerned.

Thanxx
Bill


I have 17 species of fish in my 5 tanks. At one time I had over 50
mollies. No fish has given me so much worry. They just get sick and
die or they just die. I separated them by sex to stop the population
explosion. The females got along fine without the males, but within a
few months all but a couple of the males died. Didn't get sick in a
way I could describe, but they died.

As much as I like mollies, I would not recommend them. Of the live
bearers I find the Platties the easiest to keep. I separated them at
the same time as I separated the mollies. I had to move a few around
to find compatible males as they would chase each other and one would
seem to become a scape goat. Just such a contrast to the male
mollies.

There is always a blame game when fish get sick and/or die. I go
through it, never enough knowledge, just dumb me! Then I look at all
the surviving fish and note that most of the problems are with mollies
and I forgive myself. My oldest tank has been set up for over 2
years. Most of the original fish are still alive and well. I find I
must consciously remind myself that 90% of my fish are trouble free.

Good luck, be gentle with yourself, you have fish for pleasure not
anguish.

dick

Sometimes fish die. Actually, all fish die. The trouble is, did the
:fish die from something other than a "natural cause"? If there is no
bvious reason, then short of a lab disection, you will never know.
Here are some question I have in regards to your tank.
#1. Do you do water changes based on a one week cycle, or based on the
# N0 3 reading of the tank water.
#2. If you use treated water, do you use the same brand all the time? Do
# you also follow the directions exactly all the time? 3 When adding
# your water, is it at tank temp ( measured with a thermometer), or
# just a felt temp? 4 Do you pour the water in directly, or put it in
# via a siphon tube?
From reading your post, I personally think it was "natural death".
However, the above mentioned questions, can all lead to an unexpected
fish death(there are many other procedures that will as well). The
deaths however might only occur upon a one time mistake in any of the
above mentioned procedures. The trouble with keeping fish, is we have no
real way of know what is happening in our tanks. We all get compliant,
in how we maintain our fish, and it is hard to sit back and judge how
well we are actually doing our tank up keep. A one time mistake, may
only kill one fish, it is very easy to write that death off to
"natural". The only way, to minimize these types of accidents, is to
have a set method of typical tank maintance. Stick to it, never vary.
Then at least if you do this, you can eliminate several of the variable
induced mystery tank death reasons.



--
Posted via CichlidFish.com
http://www.cichlidfish.com/portal/forums

"Fuzzy" -DONTEMAIL wrote in message
...
Sometimes fish die. Actually, all fish die. The trouble is, did the
:fish die from something other than a "natural cause"? If there is no
bvious reason, then short of a lab disection, you will never know.
Here are some question I have in regards to your tank.
#1. Do you do water changes based on a one week cycle, or based on the
# N0 3 reading of the tank water.
#2. If you use treated water, do you use the same brand all the time? Do
# you also follow the directions exactly all the time? 3 When adding
# your water, is it at tank temp ( measured with a thermometer), or
# just a felt temp? 4 Do you pour the water in directly, or put it in
# via a siphon tube?
From reading your post, I personally think it was "natural death".
However, the above mentioned questions, can all lead to an unexpected
fish death(there are many other procedures that will as well). The
deaths however might only occur upon a one time mistake in any of the
above mentioned procedures. The trouble with keeping fish, is we have no
real way of know what is happening in our tanks. We all get compliant,
in how we maintain our fish, and it is hard to sit back and judge how
well we are actually doing our tank up keep. A one time mistake, may
only kill one fish, it is very easy to write that death off to
"natural". The only way, to minimize these types of accidents, is to
have a set method of typical tank maintance. Stick to it, never vary.
Then at least if you do this, you can eliminate several of the variable
induced mystery tank death reasons.



--
Posted via CichlidFish.com
http://www.cichlidfish.com/portal/forums
I really appreciate you taking the time to share your insightful point of
view. I does cause me to reevaluate my water changing procedures. Would
you be kind enough to offer suggestions. I actually have 3 tanks - a 10,29
and 50 gallon. I routinely change water every week, sometimes 6 day,
occasionally 8 days, but weekly - 25-30% in the two smaller tanks, 40-50%
in the 50 gallon. I usually dose about 1.5-2x the 'suggested' dose because
our chloramine water comes complete with ammonia, nitrites and nitrate. The
nitrate readings at water change are routinely around 10,20, and 40
(respectively) before changing and usually drops closer to the next lower
color afterwards - . (The 50 gal/40 nitrate is a fancy goldfish tank).
Normally I run the bathroom faucet and put a thermo in the running stream to
match temperature. This empties into a 4 or 5 gallon bucket. I add the
full appropriate dose of Amquel Plus. In the 10 gallon I empty the bucket
via a cup which is around a quart. In the other two I pretty much just dump
the bucket in - usually over 'driftwood' or rocks. Not particularly slow,
but slow enough to not splash around too much nor disturb the substrate
much. I used to add dechlor and fill a 30 gallon trash can to temp and pump
it out with a pump 500 gph pond pump, but apparently I shorted it out or
burnt it up by allowing the water level to get too low in the trash can. I
have used a pond dechlor one round because I simply ran out of the Amquel
plus. It does not proport nitrite/nitrate reduction. This would have been
now 3 changes ago (16 days). I don't have a python (faucet hose?) so I dont
know how I could siphon up into the tanks.
Thanks again for your past and possible future response. I REALLY try to
be a good, concientious pet keeper. But I assume your going to tell me I
could do better - which is great. Most of the time, you dont know what you
dont know
Bill Brister - Austin, Texas