One of my little molly girls, lucky, has been lodging herself in the plants at the top of the tank since yesterday. At first I thought she had swam up into them and gotten stuck, so I pulled the plant out of the water long enough for her to swim free. But all she did was swim straight and wedge herself in another plant piece. So I figured maybe she just wanted to rest for the night and was tucking herself in. (It was nighttime when I found her like this).
This morning she was still sitting in a piece of plant not swimming and breathing heavily. She had what looked like a tiny tuft of cotton hanging out of one of her gills. So I took her out of the community tank and placed her in my 10 gal that only has 2 cory cats currently. I treated the 10 gal tank with Jungle Clear Water, which is the only form of Potassium Permanganate I have been able to find so far. I could not dose the community tank due to the shrimp. When I moved her I also took some cuttings from the plants and put them into the 10 gal tank with her, in case she wanted a place to rest.
I have noticed that all she does is swims straight untill she runs into the glass. Then she keeps swimming against the glass untill she manages to turn. She is just swiming the perimiter of the tank this way. I have watched her run into the heater cord almost every time she makes a pass. She is swimming really fast when she runs into things. This is making me think that maybe she has gone blind somehow. Perhaps this is why she was just wedging herself into the plants. I put the plants in the 10 gal in the middle so they would get the highest amount of light from the incandescent bulbs. She apparently has not come across them yet.
What could cause this to happen?
If she is blind then what should I do about feeding her?
Will she be able to go back to the community tank if she can't see?
This is the same molly that survived living in the filter for about two months. Untill yesterday she swam about normally not doing anything that would make me think she was blind.