First Tank, Dying Mollies

[Phisher84]

My friend gave me a 55 gallon tank, stand, filters, all the works, a couple weeks ago. I set everything up, used a tap-water purifier to fill the tank and let it run it's nitrogen course for a week. I tested the water and everything was perfect. I purchased 2 Flame Dwarf Gouramis and 3 Albino Catfish. Waited a week, everything was still great and went and purchased 2 Dalmation Mollies and a Betta. Everything still good, got another Mollie and 2 more Dwarf Gouramis.
In the past week, 2 of my Mollies have croaked. I replaced 1, then another died. The water levels are still good, except the ammonia is a little high due to the corpses, I would imagine, and my boyfriend accidentally burying one of the catfish. (d'oh) All the fishies get along 'swmmingly', even the Betta behaves, he's really mild, leaves all the other fish alone. I added freshwater aquarium salt to the tank and stresscoat, hoping to salvage my other 2 Mollies. These lil' cuties are my favorites and I'd really like to save them! Help!

 

[Harlequins]

Hi there and welcome

Firstly a tank does not do a nitrogen cycle in a week , did you dechlorinate the water before putting in the tank?

What is your readings for ammonia,nitrite,nitrate,ph ?
I'm no expert but if your tank has only recently set up its not cycled,the ammonia you're seeing is probably from the cycle started,adding lots of fish like you have will add more bio load to your tank and is likely that your fish will die,ammonia and nitrite needs to be kept at zero.

Do you have a liquid testing kit?

You will need to read about fish in cycling,all fish produce ammonia whilst swimming,peeing,pooing etc this what builds up,and once the filter becomes established it will handle the bio load your fish are producing,this can take up to 6-8 weeks,sometimes longer! the only way to keep this under control is to do lots of water changes and testing your water daily.

You might be better posting this in new to hobby,there's alot of fab experts on here will help.

But like i said you do need to read this link cycling

Good luck let us now how you get on

 

[Curiosity101]

Harlequin is spot on.

Your tank stats were 'perfect' after a week because there was nothing in the water. To cycle a tank you need to either add fish (which create ammonia) or just add ammonia (From a bottle of household ammonia)

Your fish are being exposed to ammonia at the moment, this will be causing damage to them and can easily result in death. The ammonia wont be coming from the dead fish (unless you leave them in the tank), it's purely coming from the live fish.

So at the mo you have...
2 X Red Robin Honey Gourami?
2 x Dwarf Gourami?
1 x Betta
3 x Albino Cory
1 x Molly?

If so then my recommendations (on top of Harlequins advice) would be...
Re-home the lot, fishless cycle the tank following the guide in our 'New to the Hobby' --> 'Beginners Resource Centre'

Failing that I REALLY would re-home 2 of the gouramis, the betta, the corys and the molly.
And cycle the tank with the 2 dwarf gouramis.

 

[OldMan47]

Welcome to the forum Phisher.

As others have been saying, your tank is not cycled. When it comes to water chemistry there is no such thing as "fine". What are the numbers?
So called fine water will have a pH of around 7 a hardness of maybe 5 degrees and less than 0.25 ppm of ammonia and nitrites. Water like that will kill off a molly fairly quickly but a kit that has a simple OK / not OK range will tell you that all is well. If you only have a fish shop tell you all is well, the numbers could be even worse. They will say all is well if there is any chance that a fish they can sell you might survive, a sale is a sale.

 

[Tropical_Fish]

How long was it since your friend had the tank setup?

Sounds like you've had some bad advice before coming here - but the above advice is excellent.

It will be difficult to cycle a tank with that many fish in so I would guess that most will probably die unless you do a lot of water changes probably around 3-5 large water changes every day.

It would be best if you could rehome the fish into a cycled tank for the time being.