Sick Molly??

My fish were looking great as usual this morning until I added more Pool Filter Silica Sand to the tank....

I had washed this gravel for aprox 2 hours and it was spotless when added ( I only added a handful before deciding to halt as I wasnt sure if it looked that good aesthetically?).

I left for an hour and when I returned I had one dead female and one female that looked like she had the shimmies and was inactive:amazed:. I added Tetra Aquasafe which says it binds any heavy metals as a precaution. All my other fish look fine so not quite sure what it could be other than contamination from the gravel?

Very distressing on Christmas day!!

 

pool filter sand is inert and unless it was an open bag exposed to "something" there would be no contaminates on it... you most likely washed it under tap water and then introduced it together with some of the tap water directly to your tank - by doing so you most likely introduced chlorine or chloramines and/or whatever else there was in the tap water which could then have affected the mollies. Alternatively the container you washed it in could have had some chemical in it. Lastly you could have stressed the fish and exacerbated a pre-existing condition...

What happened after you added the aquasafe and how are the remaining fish this morning?

 

spot on Dolphin... Thinking back I realise I stupidly changed buckets halfway (one broke) and didnt think to wash it (was to busy trying to save the sand from going down the drain). It most probably was contaminated with washing liquid.... gosh such a school boy error!

Well luckily the aquasafe seemed to help alot as the one female seems back to normal this morning and ate and the two babies I have in a breeding net are still alive (would expect them to go first if the tank still had contaminants.

Incidently anyone who says Mollies dont eat there babies has not breed Mollies as I didnt follow my usual "seperate them as soon as I see them" and proceeded to loose 10 fry in the space of an hour!

 

it happens to all of us, no matter how much experience we have...

last year this time I went out and bought some 100L plastics containers as I had fish coming in. as usual I was rushing and thought no need to wash because they're new...so I proceeded to open a whole bag of fish into the container for acclimation, within 10minutes all the fish were floating - I only saved about 30 fish out of a 100! Expensive and sad lessons we all learn...