New Mollies

Hi, I bought 3 Mollies on Saturday and I'm a bit concerned about one of them. She's shown a few sporadic symptoms and I'm hoping o can get some advise.
* On Saturday I saw her flash a couple of times on the gravel
*last night she was hiding under the drift wood
*this morning she is nice and active but has been intermittently clamping her fins
*ive seen her flash a couple of times this afternoon

I didn't feed them or turn the light on for about 24 hours. Yesterday afternoon I offered them some spirulena flakes. None of them ate anything. Today I offered them some frozen brine shrimp with garlic - again no interest. All of them are nibbling at the drift wood though. I've done a Google search and a couple of sites suggested parasites but visually she looks fine, I can't see any sign of parasites at all.
My water conditions are:
Ph:8 (staying stable)
Ammonia: 0
Nitrite:0
Nitrate:30ppm apr
I live in a very hard water area and I tested my tap water the other day for nitrates and it was coming out at around 10-20ppm! I've ordered some Seachem matrix. I treat the water with Seachem prime and i test the water using an api test kit.

Is this anything to worry about? And should I be doing anything else?

Thanks little fish 

Welcome, LT 

Thanks for providing us with lots of helpful detail to try to get to the bottom of the problem. The fish certainly are suited to your type of water, you seem to have been doing everything right since introducing them, the water quality seems good and dechlorinated and tested with good products, etc.

Just to help us a bit more, as this seems a complicated situation to "diagnose":
* are there any other tank inhabitants, and, if so, what, and what size of tank are the fish in?
* what temperature is the tank at?
* how was the tank cycled - fishlessly with household ammonia and/or were there previously fish in the tank and/or was the filter media mature and from another tank? [Just wondering in the case of the latter two is there any possibility that the tank / filter media has been in contact with fish which haven't been well.]
* is the tank next to a heating source (eg radiator) or a TV/music speaker?

A few interim suggestions:
* try feeding them with standard flake food/pellets - they may feed better on something they recognise as food / are familiar with / had in the LFS before purchase, while brine shrimp and spirulina flakes may be unfamiliar and so may be better further down the line;
* add some more decor to the tank, so that they feel safer and more "at home" - they'll inevitably feel stressed in an unfamiliar environment, and it may just take a bit more time before they settle;
* keep a close eye on the fish and have a couple of broad-spectrum treatments (eg Aquarium Munster Medimor, eSHa 2000, Waterlife Myxazin or Protozin) on standby, in the event of more symptoms, so that you're ready to treat if need be;
* keep a close eye on water quality as you're doing, doing additional water changes if water quality deteriorates.

I have no experience with livebearer fish although I know they can already be pregnant on purchase, so am not familiar with whether they may display slightly odd behaviour in such situations. Hopefully someone else may be able to advise on this.

The only livebearers I have experience with are my variatus platies. When one of the females got pregnant I didn't even notice. It was only when I moved to adults to a larger tanks and started cleaning out the smaller tank that I found the babies under a moss ball.   

Thank you everyone for their input. Sorry haven't replied straight away, had a loss in the family. The fish I was concerned about has given birth to some fry, they are 8 days old now. I've put them in a nursery net as an emergency (the adults were eating them!) although all the fish seem happy and settled, all the Mollies will become stressed when I perform maintenance on the tank, some will flash on objects and all will gasp at the surface but they all seem fine the next day. Yesterday I ran the air pump prior to doing a 10litre water change and used the exact doses of Seachem prime. I continued to run the air pump overnight. This did seem to help relieve the symptoms a bit but one Mollie was hanging around on top of the filter looking very stressed indeed she seems fine this evening. Unfortunately my nitrates have increased quite a bit, should I do another water change today? Or do them every other day to keep stress to a minimum?

I would say the tank is lightly planted, yes I used to do 25litre water changes apr but the fish didn't seem to cope with it, they seemed so stressed afterward which is why I switched to fewer/smaller changes, exactly dosed the prime with a 1ml syringe and ran air pumps before and after the change - but now my nitrates are high. The tanks ph is 8.2 but the taps ph is about 7.3. I'm not sure if my tap water contains Chloramine, I had a search online and could find no information on my tap water.

My male Mollie now appears to have Ich - he's white so it's hard to tell so I did a 20litre water change yesterday, started to add aquarium salt and raise the temperature of the tank slowly, I'm also adding extra aeration but the shop that I bought them from have said its more likely 'Molly spot' as Ich would have caused death by now. They said to treat with melafix? I've stopped raising the temperature for now (currently at 79f) I'm going to try adding a picture of him - I didn't get a great pic as he's still quite active. He has white raised spots on his body and white streaks on his dorsal fin.

Can I ask if you're dosing the tank with the water conditioner or the water before you add it to the tank?

Another thing that springs to mind is that if you've got high nitrates, there have been high nitrite levels at some point. Have you been testing the water daily for ammonia and nitrite? What are the readings today?

Could the ph difference be stressing them? I'm beginning to doubt what the shop have said - it looks like he is starting to lose some of his dorsal fin :-/

I've started doing 20litre water changes daily but what about my sick fish? What can I do for him?

Hi fcmc can I email you a picture please? Just tried to PM but I couldn't see an option to attach a picture. I'm at a funeral all day today so won't be able to do anything until later anyway I've put more salt in the aquarium today (0.1% in total so far) and iv increased the temperature again incase it's Ich. I've just put it up by a couple of degrees to 82 and later I was going to put it up to 84f do a 20litre water change and replace the salt that I had removed with the water.