Montanafish
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- Apr 29, 2012
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I am new to this forum and to keeping a tank. My daughter got her aquarium for Christmas and we have been fumbling through ever since. We have learned so much about fish, unfortunately the hard way, but my hope is to keep it up. O.k.
20 gallon tank
January 2012 set up
Originally 8 mollies (5 balloon bellies, 3 creamsicles)
Now 1 ballon belly, I fry, 2 creamsicles, I algae eater
Ammonia 0
Nitrites 0
Nitrates 20
Temperature 78
Unfortunately, we added fish prior to our tank being fully cycled, a novice mistake that I wish the Petstore would have informed us about. We spent a lot of time preparing for this endeavor and were sad to see after using a liquid test kit (API) that we had lost fish due to high nitrite levels. We lost about two during this process. My daughter was devastated, as was I, but we got our levels back to normal and all seemed to be going well. We did introduce two new fish and one may have been carrying a disease because we started to see odd behavior in the fish. We are have now lost so many fish and are completed puzzled as to what is going on. Many exhibit no signs of illness and then hang at the bottom of the tank showing lethargy for a few days and then they die. I can't say this is the case for all the fish, but it is the recent state of the ones we are losing.
We did notice what appeared to be ich in one fish, treated for ich and the white spots disappeared, we lost the fish a week later afterit appeared to improve, then we noticed a week later that another was exhibiting the curved spine and ended up dying a slow death, we also lost all of our fry but one. The one we still have was having the curved spine issue too, but knock on wood seems to have recovered (3 weeks later) the spine has straightened out. We had signs of popeye, fungus, swollen lips, possible miscarrying and white feces but no consistency. We have treated with melafix, aquarium salt, did a general cure treatment, raised the temp to expedite the ich ( not all at once). We are hanging on for dear life with our last female. Se is lonely, but we are not adding any more fish until we figure out what is going on. I did notice her rubbing on the live plants this morning
. I noticed an algae explosion, so we added the algae eater and that has helped. Any thoughts?
20 gallon tank
January 2012 set up
Originally 8 mollies (5 balloon bellies, 3 creamsicles)
Now 1 ballon belly, I fry, 2 creamsicles, I algae eater
Ammonia 0
Nitrites 0
Nitrates 20
Temperature 78
Unfortunately, we added fish prior to our tank being fully cycled, a novice mistake that I wish the Petstore would have informed us about. We spent a lot of time preparing for this endeavor and were sad to see after using a liquid test kit (API) that we had lost fish due to high nitrite levels. We lost about two during this process. My daughter was devastated, as was I, but we got our levels back to normal and all seemed to be going well. We did introduce two new fish and one may have been carrying a disease because we started to see odd behavior in the fish. We are have now lost so many fish and are completed puzzled as to what is going on. Many exhibit no signs of illness and then hang at the bottom of the tank showing lethargy for a few days and then they die. I can't say this is the case for all the fish, but it is the recent state of the ones we are losing.
We did notice what appeared to be ich in one fish, treated for ich and the white spots disappeared, we lost the fish a week later afterit appeared to improve, then we noticed a week later that another was exhibiting the curved spine and ended up dying a slow death, we also lost all of our fry but one. The one we still have was having the curved spine issue too, but knock on wood seems to have recovered (3 weeks later) the spine has straightened out. We had signs of popeye, fungus, swollen lips, possible miscarrying and white feces but no consistency. We have treated with melafix, aquarium salt, did a general cure treatment, raised the temp to expedite the ich ( not all at once). We are hanging on for dear life with our last female. Se is lonely, but we are not adding any more fish until we figure out what is going on. I did notice her rubbing on the live plants this morning
. I noticed an algae explosion, so we added the algae eater and that has helped. Any thoughts?
