Injured Molly treatment

[wildroseofky]

My Dalmatian Molly some how injured herself yesterday. I checked the tank yesterday morning and she had what looked like a scrape and a bump/bruise. She is always forcing her way behind things in the tank looking for food. It almost looks like she might have got burned. She has been squeezing behind the heater after algae. She also got wedge in behind a rock formation a few days ago. I checked her today and the swelling has gone way down and it looks like it is healing. Should I do anything for it? I saw some stuff at the store that said to treat fish injuries and I am wondering if I should add some of it. I have ghost shrimp though and wasn't sure if it was okay. Should I try to put some antibiotic salve on it? She is easy to catch. She just comes right up to you and tries to bite.

 

[jlk]

Just do some extra water changes to keep the water very healthy. She will heal with no meds necessary. Just keep an eye on her.

 

[wildroseofky]

I have been watching her all day and she just did this twitching, jerky thing. Like she was having a seizure. She is hanging out around the heater. She is right up against it. The water temp is 78 degrees according to the thermometer on the opposite side of the tank. Should I raise the temp? She is bullying the other molly more than usual. She won't let her near the heater. I don't know why they have develop a love for the heater. She swims around fine and eats but her gills seem to be moving more than usual. Like she is breathing hard.

I did a weekly tank maintenance yesterday. Vacuumed, mixed the sand some, cleaned up the plants (had a lot of dead plant material. New plants), and changed 25 percent of the water. Nitrates were a little high, 40 and nitrite was reading .25. I have been over feeding them because they both had babies and they were eating them. Someone said to feed them
more and they would leave the babies alone. I have two fry left. One from each fish. I just added new filter media but I left the old in as well so it could seed the new media. Checked water perms today and nitrate had climbed to 80 and ammonia was at .25. Did another water change and added Prime. Got nitrates down to 20 and ammonia almost zero. Ammonia reading was yellow but just a touch of green. Or so it looked to me. Nitrite was 0.

She is swimming around right now and seems fine.

 

[jlk]

Just keep an eye on her and your water parameters because they seem to be fluctuating a bit. Its possible she may have been twitching from the excess nitrate or she may just have hurt herself a bit more than her appearance shows. There are not any meds to help with a physical injury other than time and healthy water. If she develops any symptoms of infection or fungus, then meds may be necessary. Please ask if you have any questions!