The Puffer Forum

Looking for some advice, I am four days into cycling a 20 gal tank with two black mollies that eventually will be home to a F8. I added tetra safe start plus waited about 1/2 hour and then the fish, I haven't seen an ammonia spike nor a nitrite spike yet, pH is around 8, the mollies have been active and feeding but today I noticed one of them has what I believe is cotton mouth. Is this something that I really need to treat? don't want to add anything to the tank that will interfere with the cycling process because I would have to remove the carbon cartridges. Just want to be sure that it is not something that will linger in the tank and infect the puffer when I add it. Don't want to sound cruel but the mollies are only there for one purpose and that is for cycling. Thanks in advance for advice!

Update....I removed the infected mollie, retested the tank and got a Nitrate reading of 5.0, Ammonia and Nitrite are still 0, so I believe that I have successfully cycled the tank!
Question still stands whether or not to treat the tank for any rogue diseases before I purchase the F8? Thoughts?

You're going about this a little wrong. You add the Safestart & then immediately stock with the inhabitants you want to keep in there. At this point, there is only enough bacteria now to support a single molly, not 2 F8s.

+1 ,

OK......so does this mean I have to start over? Add additional safe start then the puffer? Still concerned about the cotton mouth issue with the mollie, the one in the tank now does not seem infected.
Just want to introduce the puffer to the best possible environment. Thanks for the help!

The molly probably had damage to it's mouth, allowing fungus to attack it. Are you planning to keep the lone molly with the F8s?

No just using the molly for cycling purposes, friend of mine wants it for his tank. Any thoughts on adding more TSS and then add the puffer right after? As you stated in a prior post you didn't think I would have the correct bio built up for the puffer. By the way, I'm only adding one F8 as the tank is only 20 gals. Thanks!

It definitely wouldn't hurt...

Definitely worth adding to be safe

AFTER doing a 90% WC on the tank, add the product directly to the filter.

AFTER doing a 90% WC on the tank, add the product directly to the filter.

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A guy says to his friend, "Guess how many coins I have in my pocket." The friends says, "If I guess right, will you give me one of them?" The first guys says, "If you guess right, I'll give you both of them!"