I have a large female creamsicle molly that I would estimate at well over 3 years old. I have had her two years and bought her at a local pet shop when she was by far the largest molly in her tank. My guess is that she was much more than a year old at the time. What I am seeing now is discolored scales on her back in front of her dorsal fin. The color is a faded whitish tan color that seems almost like a thin layer of something like calcium deposits on her scales. At the back of her head she has a slight indent before the line of her back resumes. It almost makes her head look separate from her body the way you see an indent on a parrot fish only not that extreme. Are these somehow signs of aging or does she have a disease that I have never seen before? The symptoms have come on very slowly over a rather long time so I am more inclined to think it is just aging affecting her. She still feeds well, dropped fry just 3 days ago and acts almost as young as she ever did with vigorous swimming and all fins erect much of the time but I worry about her. I know it seems a bit crazy to worry that much about a $2 fish but I have grown attached to her over the years I have had her.

It's age. Once I had a male creamsicle molly that I saved from Petsmart he lived for about 3 years and the same thing happened.

This is how she looks today and I expect to lose her any day.

I'm inclined to agree with you that it's just old age,but I have seen this indent before in Carp that were being feed abundant carbohydrates.These carp were in a pond and tourists would feed them anything they had (cakes, buns,and chips).Overfeeding and lack of movement in an aquarium leads to a pathological fatty infiltration.The organ that plays a key part in in the metabolic process ,is the liver,may degenerate as a result of adiposis(fatty dystrophy of the liver)and so provoke the death of the fish.

What do you feed her?

She gets mostly a spirulina type flake. When you read the ingredients list there is plenty of fish protein and other algaes ahead of the spirulina ingredient. She also get treats of frozen daphnia, frozen bloodworm and frozen brine shrimp.

When you read the list of ingredients and some of their outrageous claims,such as Powerbursts or superior nutrition,you think this is great.We should all know that the the drying process changes the taste,vitamin content,and nutritional value of dry food.It might start out with all these good ingredients but after the heat-drying most of them are lost.Freeze-drying is a much better process.

Thanks for that Copper. I really wish that freeze dried foods were made from vegetable focused foods. I have and use freeze dried tubifex worms but never seem to see that kind of thing made for a vegetarian or quasi-vegetarian fish.

You can get freeze dried algae sheets for SW fish, and also for human consumption. Don't know where, I don't eat that stuff!

BTW, there is evidence that freeze dried Tubifex can still have active pathogens. And freeze drying does not retain all the desireable vitamins for very long, they should be (but are not) stamped with a "use by" date like human food. Most of the stuff you want breaks down unless kept frozen.

I believe you can get the algae sheets in many grocery stores, and health food stores.