Help Please!

[ktmidnight]

i have a 60litre tank, 1 live plant, a few ornaments, 1 molly and 4 male guppies and around 14 molly fry

Hi,
I bought my first (2nd hand) tropical tank 2 months ago, we bought tap safe, stones, some ornaments and left it running for a fortnight. We went out and bought 2 mollies after being advised to have them until the tank was more established as me wanted a tank of male guppies (so pretty). 2 days later we have babies (so much for having 2 males lol) after 24hours we count 21 living and 2 still borns
I went straight out and bought a hatchery and seperated the fry. i have been doing a 20% water change every 2 days, the mum has since fallen fowl of swimming into the filter and getting her fin trapped. so now the tank is more established we introduced 2 male guppies last weekend and 2 more this weekend. I am checking the water regularly using the 6in1 test strips and have been added stress zyme as per the instructions. We were doing fine until monday when we lost a few of the young ones but now they have more than doubled in size and are 5 weeks old so we have put them in the tank with the rest of the fish. Firstly have I done the right thing? Obviously not the easiest of things to do but I have counted and we seem to be 3 down overnight! And a friend has told me that I shouldn't be using the tap safe or the stress zyme and just use tropical salt instead.
I have also found at the moment that the heater has been completely unnecessary with the tank staying between 78-82.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated, I realise now how nieve I was in buying the tank without doing enough research, i thought it would be just a case of keeping it heated and checking the water regularly
Sorry for rambling but my kids have become so attached to the fish (they are 2 &4) so its a huge deal to them if we lose to babies

Thanks in advance KT

 

[This Old Spouse]

Sounds like you're still in a fish-in cycle, at least the tail-end of one. Click on my link below my sig (New to Fishkeeping? Click here.) and read through the very helpful information there.

You might be losing some of the fry to the filter. They're not really strong enough to swim away from the intake and are probably being sucked into the impeller.

The best advice I have is to slip a ladie's tight (hose) over the end of the intake to keep them from getting sucked up.

They need to be fed ground-up flake food of baby brine shrimp. I feed mine the ground-up food and they've all done well.

Good luck, and keep us posted with progress!

 

[fluttermoth]

With all those babies (and they produce a lot of waste for their size when they're growing), you're actually quite overstocked, so you wan to be doing a lot of water changes.

Don't use aquarium salt, or any other bottled products; a dechlorinator is all you need.

A 25 or 30% change every other day, if you can, should help your babies grow. You might have to consider taking the females back to the shop and just keeping the babies.

 

[ktmidnight]

at the minute we've got what i believe to be a male molly, 4 male guppies and 13 babies. I was lead to believe that i could have around 15 guppies in the tank. I don't plan to keep all the babies if they all make it, a friend is going to be starting a new tank so was going to use my over stock to start hers off