silver moolie

Question
my 9 year old son has a silver Mollies who as of yesterday started swimming face down as if something is wrong with her bottom fin when i taped the tank she swam ok is there anything we can do to help her .we have a male silver Mollies two small zebra fish an algy eater .

Answer
Hi Essence.  I'm sorry your son is having trouble with his fish.  I want to help you through this, but unfortunately you do not give me much information to go on.  It would help me tremendously if you could reply to this message with a follow-up, providing me with the following information so that I may help give the most informed explanation available.  Please provide the following information in order to assist me:

1. What size tank the fish are in and what type of filter.
2. Do you have a heater in the tank?
3. Are there any outward signs of illness on the fish (white specks that resemble salt like someone shook salt all over him; white patches of any type; cloudy eyes; clamped fins; anything unusual looking).
4. What type of food you are feeding.
5. Does your son perform weekly tank maintenance of cleaning the gravel with a siphon and partial water changes.
6. Does your son have a water test kit to test the water parameters in the tank. If not, can you get the water tested at a local fish store and provide me with the water parameters? (You could let me know this when you find out, for the time being if you could answer the other questions to get things rolling that would be great!)

I would have your son do a 50% water change and gravel cleaning at this time if he has not done a partial water change and cleaning in the past few days.

It could possibly be that the fish is having a swim bladder problem.  You can feed him a pea or 2 with the outer shell taken off, and then withhold food from the tank for a day or 2.  They won't starve.  If this cures the problem, you will know it had to do with the swim bladder.  If not, and if the water change doesn't produce a change in him, we could be dealing with something else. It is very important that he does not overfeed the fish.  This can ultimately cause problems. Just a little pinch of food and then scoop out anything left after 2 minutes.

Adding aquarium salt to the tank can also help.  This is usually added as 1 tablespoon per 10 gallons of water.  Take some tank water out of the tank, add the salt to it and melt it as much as possible before putting it in the tank.  Mollies are happiest with salt in their water.

I will wait to hear back from you in regard to the questions I asked you to provide answers to, and we can go from there.

Good luck,   ;o)