Aquarium salt safe for nerite snail?

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MollysMollies

MollysMollies

Aquarium Advice Activist
Joined
Aug 11, 2014
Messages
133
Location
Albuquerque, NM-USA
Hi...I came home to a dead fish...and as I was checking my others I noticed that my black Molly has whitish areas on her body... Like a fungus and her lips are puffy and a bit white too. It's a 20 gal tall, ammonia, nitrite 0, nitrate 30ppm, ph 8.0, temp 76, did a 25% wc and dosed with API Melafix.

This fish had the discoloration on its body once before in my other tank, but I cured it with the Melafix and aquarium salt. Now I have a nerite snail and am worried about the salt being bad for my snail. I have fry in my small 5 gal tank so I can't set that up as a hospital tank. PLEASE HELP.


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Nerites actually live in salty water and won't even lay viable eggs in freshwater. They can live in full salt water. Your little guys will be fine while you treat. Sorry about your molly.
Look into columnaris and see if that is what your fish have. White on the lips makes me think it is a suspect.
 
Doesn't look like that, but it's hard to tell. I think I caught it early so my black one should be ok. They loved the salt I added!!


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Your Molly

MollysMollies said:
Hi...I came home to a dead fish...and as I was checking my others I noticed that my black Molly has whitish areas on her body... Like a fungus and her lips are puffy and a bit white too. It's a 20 gal tall, ammonia, nitrite 0, nitrate 30ppm, ph 8.0, temp 76, did a 25% wc and dosed with API Melafix.

This fish had the discoloration on its body once before in my other tank, but I cured it with the Melafix and aquarium salt. Now I have a nerite snail and am worried about the salt being bad for my snail. I have fry in my small 5 gal tank so I can't set that up as a hospital tank. PLEASE HELP.


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Click to expand...

Hello Mollys...

A tall tank, especially a small one too, isn't a good set up for Mollys that are the most sensitive of all the livebearing fish to even slight changes in the chemistry of their tank water.

Chemicals put into the water are rarely an answer to fish problems, and can cause water chemistry problems. Small water changes do little or nothing to maintain stable water properties.

Next time, provide the fish a larger tank that's shorter and longer. This set up will provide a steadier source of oxygen. Water changes are a must for any tank. The more water you change and the more often you change it the better.

Keep plugging away, though.

B
 
Hi B, thank you for the reply. I had no idea how involved fish keeping was when "Santa" brought my 4 year old a 5 gal bow front tank for Xmas. I have since learned a lot and most recently found this 20 gal tank on Craig's list in order to get these mollies into a larger space than the 5 gal my LFS told me would be fine for them. My daughter's name is Molly so of course she wanted to have mollies of her own. Then on morning 1 we were shocked to find 11 fry....I want to be a good fish mommy so I really appreciate the feedback.

As I have been researching and learning tons about the science of keeping fish, I have fallen in love with the hobby. I am currently looking for at least a 30 gal breeder size tank as I would like to have a fun community tank.

In the mean time, I have a bubbler (40gal) with two outlets that I have 4" bubbling stones on. Do you think this increases the oxygenation of the water enough for the time being?


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I disagree about the 20g tall. In my experience, they are fine and fine in specific for mollies. I also believe the oxygenation is fine from your average filter. I have never ever found it to be an issue. Bubblers and such are usually just for aesthetics.
I do agree that larger water changes are better. I generally suggest about 50% of the water changed every week.
Clean water is the number one thing fish need to be healthy. Sometimes though, meds are needed when a fish has a serious issue developing. Often times, clean water will keep most issues at bay though. However, once they have developed, more serious thing do require more serious attention.
You will want to make sure you don't get too over-populated with mollies. They can breed pretty readily. More fish means that the water gets icky faster, so you don't want to too much crowding.
 
Absolut, I appreciate your thoughts!

My mollies were used to 50+% water changes daily when they were in the 5 gal. (I learned that tank was way too small after the fact.) So I'm wondering if this is the reason for the stress and sickness now. They have only been in the 20 gal for a week. And water parameters were perfect. Nitrates (20-30ppm) were higher than in the 5. Thoughts on this? Do you know if mollies are more sensitive to nitrate levels? Maybe I need to keep these under 20ppm.


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Like B said, mollies can be rather sensitive. Mass-produced livebearers tend to be poorly bred. I have had a somewhat difficult time in the past with certain strains of molly because they are rather fragile. It is quite likely that your issues are due to all the moving, and possible came in with the mollies when you got them. At least in my area, I have found dalmation mollies to be especially frail.
Generally, nitrates under 20 is preferred. 10 or less is extra prefered, though tough in some places if there are nitrates in the tap water. If you are able to get some live plants, I would look into that to help with parameters as well. Easy things like Java moss will help, and can grow under most lights. Just make sure you have a fluorescent light and not and incandescent one.
A 30g breeder tank would be aweome. Breeder tanks tend to have very nice footprints.
 
Thank you all for your help. I'll do a 50+% wc when I get home to bring nitrates under 10ppm. I'm going to go by my LFS to see about live plants. I'll keep posting changes and I look forward to your thoughts. Thanks!


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So no live plants yet because I have my tank dosed with aquarium salt. My black Molly already looks better. Is it okay to do a large wc while my fish is healing? I don't want to stress her more.

I'd like to remove all salt so I can add some live plants and a couple otos and kuhli loaches later.


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Yes, large water changes during healing are fine. You need to keep all the parameters in check. Clean water will help her far more than the stability of her water getting dirty. :)
 
Ok. Great. Will do. She is showing nearly no more signs of the fungus, should I keep dosing the Melafix for the complete 7 days or can I stop at day 4? I'm thinking that I need to complete the dosing for the 7 days. Thoughts?
 
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