I'm So Lost

[the_thiemes]

Okay, so I spent two hours looking over this site and I have to say I think I'm a touch over my head.

I have a ten gallon tank and I don't know what any levels are in my tank as I JUST found out that I need to check them, so I plan to get a test tomorrow.

Here is a little back ground:
I got my tank 2 weeks ago. My cousion works at a pet shop and gave me the tank with these fish:

Mickey Mouse Platy (3)
Guppies (2) one had babies and they all ate them!! and now i think the other is showing signs
Bleeding Heart Tetra (2)
Red Eye Tetra (2)
Neon Sunburst (2)
Black Molly (1)
and then 2 tiger somethings? I can't find a picture of them to compare. they are long and thin and have kind of brownish small spots on them
and I think a Blue tetra, but again I'm not sure

I lost two fish already. I'm thinking that because I don't know levels in my tank and the fact that I set it up and had fish in it all the same day that it may have a ton to do with it.

so anyway, i've got 15 fish all together

Also, i don't know if it's normal, but my fish just kinda, hang out..... they tuck thier fins in and don't move, then move around a bunch and then go still again.
My bleeding hearts just hang out in the back and don't move around much. They also suddenly have white spots all over them now.
One of my mickeys' lays on the bottom and wont move until the other mickey comes down and bugs him. Do fish play? or only fight? (sorry i know i sound like a fool)
But at feeding time everyone is out and about.
so i don't know, maybe they are being normal??

and I don't know how much or how often to feed? My cousion said every other day and only enough that they eat it all in 30 sec.
But then i hear 1 or 2 times a day and enough they eat in 3 min. this is a huge difference!! and i don't know what to do.
so now i am just feeding once a day enough they eat it all in about a minute or so

Also, I put in some stuff to clear the water because it was a little cloudy. it's called Clear Water (by Jungle), but after looking, it was for established tanks, and on the back it says to take the carbon out of the filter during use, but I don't know if they mean just right when I put it in or forever??? after my two died I took the carbon out, but now i'm worried it needs to be in!
Also how strong do you need your filter to be?

I'm really worried about my fish, i've always wanted fish and i'm glad that my cousion gave them to me, but it was a suprise and I had no time to look things up or learn about anything before i got them.

Can anyone help me?

 

[Corleone]

This is too many fish for the tank. The tiger somethings need an ID - they don't sound like tiger barbs, and I can't think off hand what they do sound like.

All the fish are around 2 inches (we don't know about the tigers of course), which puts the tank at three times it's "standard" capacity, and 1.5-2 times it's long term maximum once fully established. Also, all the symptoms - tucking in fins (called clamping), the erratic movement, laing on the bottom, can be attributed to ammonia poisoning. The cloudy water, is it white? If so, it's a bacterial bloom. Don't use jungle's water clearing product - do water changes. You likely won't be able to clear the water (They'll reproduce as fast as you can remove them), but you will get ammonia levels down.

The carbon doesn't need to be used. It actually gets saturated within a few days and becomes mostly useless. The important stuff in the filter is the bacteria, which most likely you don't have yet. Your tank is in a cycle with fish, and badly overstocked at that. It's good for getting smells or some types of discoloration out of water, or for removing medications after use.

Feeding as your cousin recommended can help with ammonia problems in a cycle - 1-2 times a day for 3 minutes is for mature tanks.

I strongly advise you to return the remaining fish to the store, and do a fishless cycle (see the stickies in the New to the Hobby section). If you want to persevere with a fish-in cycle, return all but 1-3 of the fish. It'll be more work that way, and you might lose some or all of the remaining fish.

 

[Colin_T]

As mentioned by Corleone cut the feeding back to once every couple of days. The less food going in the tank the cleaner the water will be and the less chance of the fish dieing. More food means more ammonia and potentially more dead fish. In a month or so when the filter has established you can increase the feeding but until then cut it back. The fish won't starve and will be fine.

You have a combination if fishes that come from different water, ie: mollies, guppies & plates come from hard alkaline water. Tetras come from soft acid water.
Although most fish are bred in captivity and do tolerate a wide range in water conditions you should probably remove the mollies or the tetras. Platies and guppies will live in water with a neutral PH (7.0) but if the PH goes below 7.0 they won't be very happy. Mollies generally need hard water. Most tetras will be fine in acid or slightly alkaline water (PH up to 7.6) but prefer it around 7.0.
If you can keep the PH around 6.8-7.6 then most of the fish should be fine.

All tetras are schooling fish and in the wild live in schools consisting of thousands of individuals. In captivity they should be kept in groups of 10 or more of their own kind. The bleeding hearts and blue tetras need to be in groups to stop them stressing out.
The red-eye tetras are fin nippers and will probably eat the tails off the guppies.

I would keep the platies, guppies, bleeding hearts & blue tetras and get rid of the rest. Without knowing what the tiger something is I would say get rid of them too. Then do daily partial (30-50%) water changes, using dechlorinated water with a similar temperature to the tank. Cut the feeding back and wait for a month. Then when the filters have established buy some more tetras to take their numbers up to about 8-10 fish in each group. You will also be able to cut the water changes back to once a week when the filters have established.

And depending on what type of filter you have, don't wash the filter materials out under tap water. Only wash them in a bucket of aquarium water. Then tip the dirty water onto the lawn. Also if you have to replace any of the filter materials only change a bit at a time.

 

[the_thiemes]

Oh thank you! I did find out what my other fish are:

Leopard Danio (2)

Blue Flame (1)

I don't feel like i can take the fish back to her because it was a gift and she works at the pet store; so i'm afraid i may hurt her feelings, but at the same time I don't want to kill my fish. What if I got another tank? Would another 10 gallon work to break down the number of fish?
And if I do this, is there a way to set up my other tank quickly? I mean cycling with fish is really bad isn't it?

also i was watching my fish and I'm not able to tell if my Mickeys are male or female, the clamping? thats what someone said i believe, they do it so mach that I can't see their fins clearly, and now one of them is really fat, i'm worried that it might be going to have fry, or that it's some reaction to my crazy tank levels.

My bleeding hearts have white spots all over them all of a sudden? Is that a really bad sign?

My tank is really clear actually, it was just cloudly that first day and now no problems with cloudy-ness, just my poor fish dying off.

 

[Corleone]

Oh thank you! I did find out what my other fish are:

Leopard Danio (2)

Blue Flame (1)

This is good news, so that all 15 fish are about 2 inches. A second 10 gallon would help, though it'll still be a heavy stocking for each tank, making the cycle process difficult.

I don't feel like i can take the fish back to her because it was a gift and she works at the pet store; so i'm afraid i may hurt her feelings, but at the same time I don't want to kill my fish. What if I got another tank? Would another 10 gallon work to break down the number of fish?
And if I do this, is there a way to set up my other tank quickly? I mean cycling with fish is really bad isn't it?

You can look through the list of members willing to donate mature media for people in your area, or post in new to the hobby or tropical discussion if you can't find any or nobody responds. If you can find somebody, they'll take some of the cycled bacteria out of their filter (mature tanks can normally handle losing up to a third of their filter media at a time), and give it to you in a bag or bucket or tank water. You stuff it in your filter, and most of the bacteria should survive the transition and greatly speed or even eliminate your cycle. This combined with a second 10 gallon would be the best bet for saving the bulk of the fish.

also i was watching my fish and I'm not able to tell if my Mickeys are male or female, the clamping? thats what someone said i believe, they do it so mach that I can't see their fins clearly, and now one of them is really fat, i'm worried that it might be going to have fry, or that it's some reaction to my crazy tank levels.

I had this problem once myself. I got a group of platys, and they were all sick from the store - harder to sex them and very hard to tell if they're pregnant or have dropsy. Sometimes if you look at the front of the anal fin, you can tell if it's a male or female. Females will have their fin flat against the body, males will have a bit of a bump at the base of their gonopodium because they can't fold it completely flat.

My bleeding hearts have white spots all over them all of a sudden? Is that a really bad sign?

This is most likely ich ("whitespot"). This is a very bad parasitic disease. It can kill fish quickly and can spread like wildfire in an aquarium. It's also hard to treat in a cycling tank, because constant water changes will be removing any medicine you use to treat it. Healthy fish are rarely infected, but the stress of a cycle makes fish more susceptible.

 

[the_thiemes]

Okay. So here is what is going on:

Yesterday I read what you wrote and went to the store
I got something to take out the "bad" stuff in the water and it calms the fish
Also got some stuff that i guess speeds up cycling??
and a water test.

my last test said this:
Nitrate: 20
Nitrite: 5.0
Very Hard Water
Chlorine: 0
Alkalinity: 300
PH: 7.8

but my reg tap water was less deadly!!
I did a 35% water change yesterday and a 25% water change today.
Yesterday my last blue flame died and today shortly after the water change, one of my guppies died quickly.

how can I be doing this so so wrong?

 

[Tolak]

Ignore pH, chlorine, alkalinity, and hardness for now. Your main concerns are ammonia, after that nitrite. What are the names of the products you used to speed cycling, and remove the "bad" stuff?

What product are you using to dechlorinate, and how much are you using?

That tank is nearly triple the stocking for a new tank. If you could get some mature media from someone local it would give your fish the best chance of survival. Try a local shop, you could also check for a local club; http/fins.actwin.com/dir/clubs.php

You could easily be doing 50% water changes daily with that stocking, 75% would be even better. You are trying to dilute the accumulated ammonia, which is nothing more than fish waste.

Cycled media can be shipped, I have shipped it before, it's around $15 standard ground. I'm in Chicago, someone closer would be a few dollars cheaper.

 

[Corleone]

From the stats you list, I'm guessing you're using Jungle or similar 6-in-1 test strips?

Drop the strips. They aren't as accurate, test for stuff you don't really need to worry about in most setups, and they don't test for ammonia, which is the most deadly.

The biggest argumetn against them is price. The cheapest I've seen them for is $7 for a pack of 25. With the price of the ammonia tests, this is about $15 for 25 tests. Get yourself a liquid test kit. The API freshwater master kit is $25-30, but you can get hundreds of tests out of it. It will last months, even with the amount of testing you do through the cycle.

 

[the_thiemes]

so I a do a water change for 50 or 75% should I take the fish out? and where should i keep them?
Yes, jungle is what I'm using and yes i have the strips.
next check i will go get a better water test kit.

 

[Corleone]

You can leave the fish in, no problem. If you're going to do enough of a change that there might not be room for htem left in the tank, you can keep them in a bucket of dechlorinated water temporarily. Or you can do two smaller changes in a row, but remember that two 50% water changes is equivalent to doing one 75%, since the second time you'll be changing some new water as well as old.

 

[the_thiemes]

sadly i can't get a new test kit til tomorrow or sat, but I did I think almost a 65% water change.
But my sunburst died. they seem to do it after the water changes, is it because it stresses them out too much on top of not being in healthy water?
My Nitrite droped, it's now 3.0, so maybe if I do another change like today it'll get to a healthy amount?
how do i know when the tank has cycled?
How long should I keep up the big water changes?

 

[Corleone]

Water changes themselves aren't stressful enough to kill fish (though maybe ones on the very brink might get pushed over), but sometimes water quality is so bad that improving it too quickly is as big a shock as the bad water to start with. As high as nitrite is, if ammonia is also at comparable levels, that could be the case here.

 

[the_thiemes]

Water changes themselves aren't stressful enough to kill fish (though maybe ones on the very brink might get pushed over), but sometimes water quality is so bad that improving it too quickly is as big a shock as the bad water to start with. As high as nitrite is, if ammonia is also at comparable levels, that could be the case here.

Thank you so much. you've been such a huge help

 

[petertr]

By the way, are you trying to warm the water before you add it?

Your tank is small enough that you could fill 4 10 litre buckets from the cold tap (I wouldn't use the hot tap if I were you) and leave overnight.


As well as the water being warmed to at least room temp, some of the chlorine will be evaporating off - although you still need to treat it with a de-chlorinator - are you using one of these at the moment?

Too many temp changes or too much chlorine could explain your fish dying during water changes.

Afraid 50%+ water changes can cause stress - especially to unhealthy fish - all of these things have a knock-on effect, I'm sad to say.

 

[Tolak]

Using hot water from the tap depends on what sort of hot water heating system you have. If it is a water heater independent from your home heating unit, and stores water under pressure, you will be fine. I have been doing it for years, and couldn't imagine having 500+ gallons sitting around heating to room temperature every week.

If 50%+ water changes caused stress I would have stressed fish instead of breeding fish.