my pregnant molly...
 

So I'm pretty sure my Molly is pregnant. I'm new to owning fish so I don't know much about anything, really, and I'm not positive she's pregnant but from what I've been reading I'm pretty sure.

Anyways, I noticed today that she's having a hard time swimming. Her tail end floats to the top and she struggles to swim for a while, but then gives up and just rests. I'm really worried. What's going on?

If your tank is less than 2 months old then you need to do a water change to get rid of ammonia, nitrites and nitrates. 50% making sure to add water conditioner and keep it close to the same tmep as the tnak water.

Have to ask:
Do you have a heater?
What type of filter?
Tank size?
How long has it been set up?
Do you have a good liquid test kit for ammonia, nitrites and nitrates?
If you don't then water changes are a must as soon as you can.
Also, do you have a water dechlorinator/conditioner?

If you can provide some of the informaiton above we can help you more with the problem. The molly being prego normally doesn't cause the problems she is having.

First if all, the tank has been in operation for two months now. We have been doing 35-50% water changes on a roughly weekly basis. A 50% water change was just completed yesterday, with water conditioner/dechlorinator added as well as a small amount of aquarium salt. We have test strips for nitrites/nitrates, hardness, etc. and have also been testing the ammonia levels. According to our tests, all is normal.

The tank is equipped with a heater, standard blue carbon filter and a bio-wheel. The temperature has been steady at 79 degrees.

To add to my previous post: the rest of the fish in the tank (two mollies) are behaving normally.

What do you feed them and how much?

Also, you should invest in a liquid test kit (API or Red Sea) instead of the test strips.

we feed them dry flakes, a small amount (as much as they can eat in about 20-30 seconds) twice a day at most. She actually hasn't eaten today. But the other two are fine.

I have had no luck with live bearers I bring home pregnant. Once they get close to giving birth or give birth I lose 5/6. Anymore I make sure to buy them young and not prego if I can do so. It may be just one of those things where you have an older fish.

You know, the funny thing is is that we don't think she was pregnant before we got her... a few days after we got her one of our other fish was quite... attracted to her and since then has backed off. So I think she wasn't pregnant until she was in our tank... although I could be wrong, I don't think there's any real way of knowing. Other than the fact that she was tiny when we got her.

a few weeks ago, I bought a female platy... I made sure she wasn't ready to pop... she was smaller (tiny) ... I thought I had a good chance of keeping my good gene pool in my tank with having one of my males breed her. I took her out of the paper back covering the plastic container she was in...

SURPRISE!

In the container with her was over 10 fry (I am sure there was more because she was snacking... )! Which were not there when she was put in the container...

I immediately put here in a separator in the tank so she would be left alone by my males... I put here in there with plants and a cover so she wouldn't make a suicide jump... I left for a few hours to come back to find her gone out of the separator... The lid was on the floor... So the search for the lifeless body began... an hour later I saw all of my fish looking at me stupidly as I am baffled on where the platy was at... I looked up at them and saw my Izzy (orange micky mouse)... I know my eyes are getting bad but seen two Izzy's moving in unison... I realized the fish made an escape like McGivor and jumped into the tank... So now I had Dizzy... She was fine and well adjusted and acted like every fish in the tank...

One week later, she decides to get stressed out for no reason and die.

Livebears... I am not surprised by anything they do anymore... Mollys are even worse...


BTW what type of molly do you have? If it is a balloon molly, it maybe swim bladder disease.

If I were you id be careful w/ the 50% water changes. When a large amount of the water os replaced, it can drastically change the proerties of the water. This really stresses the fish out and it can get sick or act strangely. I used to do large water changes weekly or biweekly like you, but I noticed when i did so, all of my fish acted strangely and evey once in a while one would die for no reason. I switched to changing 20% of the water twice a week and the results were a mazing. Since then my deaths have been miimized and my fish look healthier.