Hello, Everyone. I Need A Bit Of Help.

[Whesker]

Hello, everyone. My name is Wes, and I have started a 10 gallon fish tank.

Everything was going well, although I DID overstock the tank.

Here's what's in it: Two balloon mollies, one male (black) and one female (silver). Although I know that the mollies are technically brackish, I fell into the Julii Cory rap and bought three. This is when my tank went over what people would consider healthy stocking. There are also three ghost shrimp, but I really don't count these as contributing to the bioload. I tried my own spin on the "fishless cycling" technique, which was basically just using a lot of bacterial starter juice from Top Fin.
It worked beautifully. Two weeks after adding my fish, which I did in male molly --> two female mollies --> three corys --> three shrimp, everythign was testing as zero. Although my water is very hard, the fish were raised in it so it's okay. Especially for the shrmp.

THEN, I failed it up. I added about 2 gallons of water during my weekly 50% water change, but FORGOT TO DECHLORINATE!!! I think this killed my biofilter immediately, although I did add dechlorinator ASAP. I think this because my ammonia and (whichever of the nitr_tes normally should be absolutely zero) SPIKED. Over the next week, they were registering at the "warning" level of my test strips. Needless to say, a molly died.

Also, at the same time I failed at cleaning my tank, I failed to replace my carbon filter. This probably contributed to my unpleasant bout of failure.

So I'm doing 10% every other day to keep the crap down while my bacteria recovers.

However, NEW PROBLEM! My black balloon molly, Blackie (I think it's a good name) has white... things... on his face. My camera's a pretty poor specimen, unless someone can give a detailed guideline on how to take pictures of fish with a <<Sony Cybershot>>, we'll have to rely on my descriptions of the spots.

They appear to be .6mm wide white bits. There are two on his lips, and two on his right eyelid. I am not happy about this situation. They may also be slightly "convex", like little balls attatched to his skin.

I suspect a fungal infection caused by the spike in water-junk, and I would like to know what you all recommend.

I would add salt, but keep in mind that I have corydoras.

Sorry that my first post is a wall of text, and an unpleasant wall at that, but I hope to get everything smoothed out after this.

~Wes.

 

[minxfishy]

Firstly the test strips are not the most accurate to use, you really need a liquid based test kit, API or Nutrafin are recommended.

Im not sure on the bacterial starter stuff you used, but most are useless, you can usually get away with about a week when first stocking before the ammonia and nitrIte start to show, so maybe this stuff not being that good, plus the lack of dechlor didnt help with the situation.

You need to be doing daily, sometimes 2/3x water changes to get the ammonia and nitrIte levels to as close to 0 as possible, in a fish in cycle its recommended to keep them below 0.25ppm for the health of the fish, Im actually suprised your shrimps werent the first to go as they are more intolerant than the fish to these high levels.

The water changes can be up to 80% at a time if necessary, remembering to temperature match the water you are returning to the tank of that the fish are already in, plus dechlorinate. The test again an hour or so later, if the levels are still high, do another change, continue this routine until the levels of ammonia and nitrIte are safe, you will probably have to follow this routine for several weeks until the filter catches up with the bio load of the tank. 10% every other day is no where near enough with a fish in cycle Im afraid. Please take a look thru the beginners resource centre and the link specially for fish in cycling.

The white spots on the mollie, are more than likely a bacterial infection bought on by poor water quality, do they look like specs of salt? If so more than likely whitespot/Ich if they are more furry in appearance and raised from the skin, then fungus/columnaris would be my guess, but you would be better off putting that problem in the emergency section to get some better advice on that problem.

Salt cannot be used with corys in the tank Im afraid.

 

[Whesker]

Alright. I'll hop on that right away.

I've been shown how to use the "macro" function on my camera, so now I have some quality pictures of the mystery sickness.

I'll post them in the Emergency section.

Thanks so much for your help,

~Wes

 

[OldMan47]

Whesker, Do not worry about "failing" to change the carbon in your filter. It is probably one of the things that is helping you a little. The carbon, along with everything else in the filter, will provide a place for beneficial bacteria to grow. This would be a bad time to replace it. You are into a fish-in cycle and are starting to see some of the ammonia that fish produce and the effects of that caused you to lose the molly. You need to continue doing large partial water changes, with dechlorinator, at least once a day until you can get the test kit that was suggested. In the meanwhile, you should also be treating whatever it is that is growing on the fish. This could complicate things a bit because whatever you are using for medication will also need to be replaced when you do those water changes. There is a link in my signature to fish-in cycling that you may find useful. If the diagnosis of the white spots is that you have whitespot/ich in the tank, I also have a link to an informative article on what ich is and how to treat it.