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Hi everyone,

Our balloon molly is heavily pregnant but only gave birth to 1 fry so far (about 3 weeks ago). She is now extremely huge and lost her appetite, and ability to stay afloat.

She has also been producing thin white thread-like discharge that hangs from her. Today she is just staying at the bottom of the tank, any idea what we should do?

I have read that some people change the water every 3 days during fish pregnancy or add salt to the tank to help smooth delivery, some people increase the water temperature to around. We think there might be a blockage! What should we do now, please help

Photos are here
http://picasaweb.google.com/oliviakh/BalloonMolly?authkey=nh66U2uSRsI

Sounds like your balloon molly has a few issues, being gravid often causes a high metabolic drain on a fish, leaving it susceptible to bacterial infection, in addition a balloon molly is off to a health disadvantage from the get go.

Balloons often get issues from organ compression against the swim bladder anyway, the curvature of the spine and the condensed area of the midbody doent leave much room for error. Combine that with rigours of egg production in a non livebearer it would be effort enough, but with the large size of liveborn offspring in livebearers its a recipe for disaster. Retained solidified eggs and fry , and constipation during gravidity in a balloon variant is not at all unusual and quite a few will die during their reproductive period.Swim bladder failure is very likely.

Theres usually very little that can be done, maybe a little melafix to confront the bacterial issues, as for the rest its a case of keeping things as stable as possible, keeps temps warm and steady, water quality needs to be clean, but avoid temperature fluxes during water changes, and it might be worth witholding food.