Thursday morning I was greeted with the sight of James netting a molly who looked like he had a gill-fin which had turned into a pin-cushion – it was just awful. We figured it was some sort of fungus. We put him in the isolation tank. Looking carefully, we couldn’t see a probelm with any of the others, but the angels didn’t look very happy at all. Instead of jumping out of the water to attract attention and thereby food, they were skulking in the mid/low regions, mostly in the plants. We fed them some flake, but the angels weren’t at all interested, showing that they must have been very unhappy. James suggested blood worms, to tempt them, and so put in two blocks (I had thought he was only giving them one). They didn’t eat those, either, but the mollies did.

When we got home, things weren’t too good. During the day I posted on the forum online and someone suggested the molly had flex, not fungus. I looked around on the web and decided they were probably right. Mr Flex was still alive, which was amazing, when we got home (as an aside, his isolation tank was already very cloudy, from his poo and the small amount of flake we tried to give him. Amazing how quickly ammonia etc must build up). The angels were still looking particularly unhappy, two especially – both of them had red spots/marks around thie mouths, along their spines and at the base of their fins. The other two didn’t have these, or not as noticeably if they did. An hour or so after we got home, one of the angels died. Another one died about three hours later, after spending his time floating around aimlessly, sometimes up the top looking for air. We were very sad.

Between the angels’ deaths, we noticed about five of the previously rudely healthy mollies looked bloated. We realised they probably had dropsy, which depressed us even further.

We ran the full gamut of tests, and discovered that our pH had plummeted to about 6. This was clearly a problem; even if it hadn’t actually caused the problem, it would be stressing the fish and making them susceptible. We immediately added ‘pH up’, and brought it back to 6.6. It was interesting to notice a bit of a change in the angels’ behaviour after this – they got a bit more active.

We half-dreaded getting up this morning and looking in the tank. Mr Flex, however, was still alive, and so were the angels, although they were showing some of those red marks (not as bad as the other two, though). And – the mollies were back to being a little portly, rather than looking bloated. We realised their scales hadn’t been sticking out, as they would with dropsy, and James ‘fessed up to having given them two blocks of bloodworms. We figured they must have eaten almost the lot and just been bloated by food, not sickness. We really do have to be stricter about feeding them (or not, as the case may be).

We decided to try out the Northcote Aquarium, just for something different: it’s a bit closer to home, and we hoped they would be a bit better with fish advice than Coburg sometimes have been. NA is a very different set-up from Coburg, certainly. The man there was very willing to talk to us. He asked about the pH and the hardness, and said the low pH was the problem because mollies prefer brackish and slightly alkaline, and angels prefer water around 6.8-7.0 too. He recommended we out the pH up and make sure it always stay there. It was really great for him to be so frank and not try to sell us medicine; I’d asked about it, but he didn’t think we needed it. He also said the red marks were probably from the acidic water.

As a consequence, we came home and put the pH up – it’s around 7 now, we think. We also put Mr Flex into the bucket (so that he’s got more room) with water from the tank (we were doing a water change anyway) plus some salt, and put his pH up too. A few hours on, I can report that he seems to be doing significantly better: the flex appears to have fallen up. I think there’s still a bit on him, and his fin looks pretty red, but I’m more confident about him than I was. The bucket isn’t ideal for a prolonged stay – it’s meant to be cool this weekend, and we’re off to Ballarat. Maybe we’ll put him in the isolation tank, in the actual wank, just for the sake of the temperature. As well, I’m not actually sure that it was flex, as apparently that usually happens around the mouth.

The angels are looking a bit better, but they’re still not acting 100%. Very strange – looking on the web to find out what pH ranges our fish prefer (which we obviously should have done before…), we found a site saying angels actually prefer slightly acidic water when they come from the wild – which I’m sure these didn’t, but still surely they can’t have changed so much in captivity to prefer alkaline? Perhaps it was just a matter of having the pH drop so much in so little time. We’ll have to watch it carefully. We changed the carbon in the filter, too, since it’s been in there a while – it might have been exhausted and leeching bad things into the water.

So after all that, we have two angels which still aren’t out of the woods, and a molly who might yet die. We’ve decided that, having been rash in the two previous months we will err on the extremely conservative for the next while. This means frugal feeding and no more fishy buying for a while – probably until Feb, when we’re back from Tas. We’ll also bring back James’ old little tank from Ballarat: we will finally set up a quarantine tank. I think we should build up our platies – the three left are looking lonely, and aren’t schooling together – and I think we’ll also get a few more angels. I’m so glad that we won’t have to start over; James was getting very dramatic last night and talking about what we’d do to start again, after all our current fish died, as they were obviously about to.

I did a bit more pruning of the plants – aquascaping – during today’s water change; it’s looking a lot better and less bare than after the last, partly because I moved some taller plants to the middle and partly because the other plants have recovered fromk their last pruning.