Black Mollys and disease

Question
Hi I have had my tank for 6 weeks it is a twenty gallon. I have 6 black mollys,3 neon tetras and 2 guppies(males so not to breed) and 2 dalmation mollys. My test readings are...
ammonia=0
nitrate 15ppm
nitrite=0
hardness=50ppm
alkalinity=80
ph=7.2
and yes i had gone thru new tank syndrome and was doing 3x 50% water changes a day but I got thru it somehow.
Now my problem is that it seems like every other day one of my mollys is dead.
They start to act different, wiggling on the bottom of the tank or just laying there intil I find them finally dead.I tried treating the tank with "quick cure" but it did not help. I tried raising my tank temp to 80-82 and added salt(which my neons where not impressed with) I am new to this and am at wits end. Can you help me save them? Thanks for listening.
                       Jerri-Lynn  

Answer
Hi Jerri-Lynn;

It's called "shimmy" and is related to poor water conditions and/or stress. Since your tank has just come out of "new tank syndrome" I would suspect that to have been the cause. NTS makes for very poor water conditions until it fully finishes. Since there were so many fish to start the cycle, they experienced more stress than they should have. Mollies don't always show it right away either so they were continuing to feel ill after the tank finished with NTS. Just keep up with regular water changes of 25% every week and hopefully the mollies will be feeling better soon.

There is a product made by "Jungle" called Molly Bright and another called "Shimmy Block". They do work in some cases so you might want to try that along with the water changes. Mollies also require greens to eat. Feed chopped spinach and/or spirulina every day with their regular food. It is good for the other fish too. Spirulina is a type of algae and is available frozen and in flake form at the local fish store. For spinach I use the frozen chopped kind from the grocery store. You can use fresh if you want to. I just like the frozen because it doesn't go bad like the fresh does.

Followups welcome

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Chris Robbins

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