Sick balloon Molly and hospital tank question

[joels3400]

I noticed my balloon Molly is just sitting in the bottom of the tank and breathing heavy. My levels in my 20 gallon are fine and I just added the balloon yesterday.

I fed her earlier today and she was swimming energetically. Could this be swim bladder? She does have a small black poo hanging out.

Secondly, if I wanted to setup a hospital tank, do I need beneficial bacteria? Won't the meds kill it anyway? I do have 5.5 starter kit but have not established any bb in the media yet.

 

[Delapool]

Could be not adjusting well for some reason to the new tank. I would QT as then she can have have somewhere quiet to recover hopefully. Black poop sounds fine.

Meds will eventually knock the bb around but you need ideally to have a cycled hospital tank to start. Otherwise it adds to fish stress. I'd pinch some media out of you main tank to get going. Or just leave some filter material from your QT in your main tank for a week or so.

 

[joels3400]

Thank you for your reply delapool! I appreciate the time you take to respond to so many questions on this forum.

My balloon Molly was swimming energetically again yesterday morning and right before I turn off the light for the night, she was back to the same spot. Maybe she's just rests there at the end of the day.

I put the filter media in the main tank to grow some bb. How long should I keep it there?

 

[Delapool]

Pre-coffee morning here so hope this makes sense

Good news on the fish

I'd say a week will start to have bb grow. Might do better in the filter but I usually just tie off in a mesh bag near filter outflow (mainly to just get some water flow along the sponge). From memory carbon I've read starts to get bb growing after 1 to 2 weeks. So I'd say 2 weeks should have it well seeded.

I used to just let it sit in main tank for whenever needed but have recently decided to use the QT for plant growing and hopefully only the odd treatment.

 

[happygirl65]

Glad to hear your fish is settling in better. It can take 2-3 days for them to start acting like their normal selves. Keep watching.

I would take the filter pad out of the main tank and add it to the filter in the new one or scoop a bunch of substrate into the new one....I also used to keep a sponge on a powerhead in the main tank and move it to the QT for an instant set up (large sponge and powerhead going into a 10 gal QT worked great) Now I add additional filter floss to my filter so I can just take it out and put it in the QT if needed.