Molly Paralysis

[DocOc]

1~What type of fish is afflicted? In addition, please describe what is wrong with the fish to the best of your ability.
My mollies are, one-by-one, experiencing a progressive paralysis that eventually kills them by starvation or suffocation.

2~What are your tank parameters (ammonia, nitrites, nitrates, temp, pH)? Please give exact values.
pH=6.5, Temp=79°F, Nitrates<0.05ppm, Ammonia<0.25ppm

3~ How large is the tank? How long has the tank been set up?
~29gal Hex. 6 months

4~What type of filtration are you using?
Aquaclear 70
5~How many fish are in the tank? What kinds of fish are they and what are their current sizes?
Too many: 40. Two Corys, a large pleco, 5 small tetra, two clown loaches, and the rest are platys and mollys

6~When is the last time you did a water change and vacuum the gravel? How often do you do this? How much water do you remove at a time?
I change 20-30% of my water every one or two weeks.

7~How long have you had the fish? If the fish is new, how did you acclimate it/them?
These were some of the first fish in the tank.

8~Have you added anything new to the tank--decor, new dechlorinator, new substrate, etc.?
Nope.
9~What kind of food have you been feeding your fish, have you changed their diet recently?
Nope

 

[Devilishturtles]

Does the side of the fish turn white? Slowly creeping all over and starving the fish of movement? If so, could be a Columnaris infection. In that case, I'd treat with an antibiotic such as Maracyn-Two. Without treating it will continue to infect you fish.

HTH

 

[DocOc]

Ah, yes, I forgot to say what my treatment methods have been. Marycyn-two was one of them. Also, Mara-safe for an internal paracite. It seems that popeye has gone together with this problem for a couple of them.
I don't see any outward changes, color or otherwise. It is really weird.

 

[Devilishturtles]

Besides columnaris, I don't know of any other disease or otherwise that causes paralysis. I suppose it's possible that you could have gotten a resistant strain of it, but even that isn't likely. You could try treating with a bout of Maracyn and Maracyn-Two together and see if that blasts it out.

Otherwise, I don't know either. Wish I could help you.