OhNeil1969
Aquarium Advice Addict
I woke up this morning to both good and bad news in my 29 gallon tank. Sometime during the past day, my dalmation molly had her fry. Ironically, I didn't know she was pregnant so she wasn't quarantined. There are several molly fry alive and hiding. Also, none of them seem to be stressed and the other tank mates seem to be leaving them alone.
The bad news is that my swordtail and 1 of my zebra danios were found dead. There was no sign of disease or stress prior to this and the water is good. In fact, I checked afterwards and found that I had 0 ammonia, 0 nitrItes and 5 ppm nitrAtes. Both fish looked like they had been attacked but I've had this tank with the same tank mates for 5 months now without any real incident. I've read about other species of fish becoming aggressive when pregnant or after birthing fry but I've never heard of that type of behavior from mollies.
Does anyone have any info about aggression from fish that have normally been passive. I'm concerned that this may just be the beginning.
Currently I have:
4 zebra danios;
5 neon tetras;
9 mollies (2 new born confirmed, 2 about 1 month old);
1 red wag platy;
1 serpae tetra;
2 guppies;
1 siamese algae eater
and 3 mystery snails.
I know it may sound like a lot. The tank, however, is fully cycled. I'm running 2 HOB filters (a TopFin Power 30 and a Marineland Penguin 200 with bio-wheel). I'm performing 2 PWC's per week. There are both live and artificial plants. The live plants aid in filtration and all plants provide good hiding spots. Furthermore, I test the water regularly with the API master test kit. Up until this point I haven't had a real water quality issue. I did increase the frequency of my PWC's due to high nitrAtes a couple of weeks ago. The crappy test strips I was using indicated that all was well when it actually wasn't. So as I said, I really don't know why these fish died. Any info you can give will be greatly appreciated. Like I said, I don't want something like this to happen again.
The bad news is that my swordtail and 1 of my zebra danios were found dead. There was no sign of disease or stress prior to this and the water is good. In fact, I checked afterwards and found that I had 0 ammonia, 0 nitrItes and 5 ppm nitrAtes. Both fish looked like they had been attacked but I've had this tank with the same tank mates for 5 months now without any real incident. I've read about other species of fish becoming aggressive when pregnant or after birthing fry but I've never heard of that type of behavior from mollies.
Does anyone have any info about aggression from fish that have normally been passive. I'm concerned that this may just be the beginning.
Currently I have:
4 zebra danios;
5 neon tetras;
9 mollies (2 new born confirmed, 2 about 1 month old);
1 red wag platy;
1 serpae tetra;
2 guppies;
1 siamese algae eater
and 3 mystery snails.
I know it may sound like a lot. The tank, however, is fully cycled. I'm running 2 HOB filters (a TopFin Power 30 and a Marineland Penguin 200 with bio-wheel). I'm performing 2 PWC's per week. There are both live and artificial plants. The live plants aid in filtration and all plants provide good hiding spots. Furthermore, I test the water regularly with the API master test kit. Up until this point I haven't had a real water quality issue. I did increase the frequency of my PWC's due to high nitrAtes a couple of weeks ago. The crappy test strips I was using indicated that all was well when it actually wasn't. So as I said, I really don't know why these fish died. Any info you can give will be greatly appreciated. Like I said, I don't want something like this to happen again.