Baloon Mollies and Water condition problems.?

Question

I have about 10 mollies in the tank, but it seems that they din swim really active in the tank but group together and stop at a corner. They won't eat anything as well and swim quite near to the surface. At the same times, the tank was in slightly yellow n brownish colour. Previously they do swim together all the while in the tank and keep playing with each others, and now they just keep quite and seems like trying to died by themself.

I don't have any drift wood, i did add those amonia absorb stone. How long will the stone last? Can it last long about few months? How can i reduce the nitrits beside changing the water?

If i overfeed the mollies, the water will change to yellow or brownish? I'm sure that is not algae, will the water change back to its color by applying those clear water medicine?

Answer 1

Did you test your water parameters? You probably have poor water quality which will lead to disease and death. You need to do a big water change of 30-40% if you have ammonia or nitrites. If your nitrates are over 40ppm you also need to do a water change. Why is your tank brownish? Is it algae? You may also want to add a little aquarium salt to the tank, mollies like salt. Good luck.

Answer 2

Check your ammonia, nitrates, and nitrites, and make sure that they are not too high. If they are, do 20% water changes daily until they go down. You say the tank is yellowish, do you have a piece of driftwood in the aquarium? If you do, take it out, it is lowering the pH (and mollies like higher pH), and could be leeching harmful chemicals into the water. If you don't have driftwood, you are probably over feeding and/or under cleaning. Do a 20% water change with a gravel vaccuum once a week, and only feed what the fish can eat in 3 minutes once a day. If you don't have salt in the water yet, add 1 tablespoon of freshwater aquarium salt per 5 gallons of water, and that should perk them up right away. Finally, balloon mollies just tend to have more health problems than most fish because they are genetically modified to have the balloon shape and to be smaller than the typical molly.

Edit: adding salt to the aquarium will help reduce the effects of nitrites on your mollies until you can get the nitrite level down. The only way to get nitrites down is to do 20% water changes daily.