I have 11 balloon molly fry in a breeder box in my 10 gallon tank. I know this will sound bad but It is still cycling. I was changing the water everyday untill my mom said not to do water changes anymore. The ammonia is about 1-4 ppm. I'm not sure which one it is 1, 2 or 4. Point is, there is a good amount of ammonia in the water with my baby fish. the tank is about 1 week old. My mom said that she'll get a new tank when she has money for it, so I can move the babies. She also said that if I move them now, they could die. Should I continue not doing water changes or should I do them because of the ammonia. Also, my mom bought an ammonia remover, she said that it might kill the babies, should i use it?? Should I do water changes by taking a plastic cup full of water from the tank at a time? would that be ok? Even though the ammonia levels are so high, all my fish seem to be doing fine. I have the strips for testing nitrate and nitrite, even though they are crap. My mom doesent have money to buy all this stuff. So i'm stuck with the strips. They said 0 for both nitrate and nitrite.

This post has been edited by MollyFresh: Jul 1 2008, 04:26 PM

id carry on with water changes, but thats just me. as for the fry, if they die, well im sure there will be more to come!! live and learn from your mistakes

Thank you so much!!

Just bear in mind that ammonia removers contain an acid that lowers the ph value. If the ph goes down to 6.0 or even below then 95% of your nitrifying bacteria will die or go dormant.
I hope you have a ph test kit or strips, too, because otherwise it is hard to tell if you use that ammonia removers constantly.

i would continue to do the water changes but not use the chemical.

agreed. the ammonia will help get the bacterial colonies going, of course too much could kill your fish; so just do little water changes to help keep it from getting too high and avoid the chemicals since chemicals arent always the best idea for fish even if it is made for the aquarium... except dechlorinator of course. these are my opinions anyway, as always you should research plenty and check to see what advice that is given is right. i hope im right. i hope your fish live. and i hope you have good luck your fish keeping.

oh, and speaking from experience, one of my bettas, the male crowntail, he was sick for about 3 months straight once when i was a noobie fish keeper. i literally spent about 10 times more money on different types of medications than i paid for the actual fish... long story short, the meds saved his life in one regard because when he got seriously bad off i could see that the medication was helping, so it brought him back from the brink of death, but after medicating for 3 months and he was only somewhat well i finally gave up and just quite putting it in his tank ~ then he got all better after that ~ the meds were actually hurting. so chemicals and meds can be good and VERY useful and then there are times when they can not be so useful and actually end up doing more harm than good even if you're following the instructions on the box. its just a matter of the situation. so what i try to practice is preventing the need for such things to begin with by just doing good proper maintenance and it sounds like you're doing the best you can at this point. good luck

This post has been edited by Starfishpower: Jul 2 2008, 04:07 AM

Fry are a lot - I mean a LOT - tougher than people let on. I raise mine in buckets. Here's a story for you: I was using a plastic container lid to move fry from one container to another - both containers were only about a gallon and had ten fry in them (I water change daily). These were newborns. I got one fry stuck in the lip of the container and I didn't notice. It stayed there OVERNIGHT in literally a droplet of water. I came out in the morning to feed them and omigod there's a baby fish there, poor thing must be dead? Nope. Swam away. Grew up. Got sold.

If you have a clean bucket - one of the ones you use for water changes is ideal - the fry will be absolutely fine in there. use tank water and gradually change the water in the bucket by a few cupfuls an hour to remove the ammonia in it. If they're weak enough to die just because you moved them into a clean bucket, they aren't going to survive ammonia concentrations that high. I'm not exactly gentle with my fry, because I don't have room for them all so I run a 'survival of the fittest' operation. They're mixed sizes, mixed strains, growing up in crowded containers and the ones that are too weak to get enough food or outrun the larger fish - in short, the weak ones that will reduce the quality of my bloodlines - get weeded out. It's convenient because you can't always tell from the outside which are going to be robust adults and which will be timid, weak and hard to feed and breed. The other fish know. It also saves me having to cull healthy looking fish - I'm a hopeless softy.

I agree with Laura, fry arent as sensitive as people let on, but they are still more sensitive than adults. I've had lots of fry die for no reason, but have no adults die. There immune system isnt very good, and there body cant handle much ammonia.