I am very new to having fish. This is my first aquarium. I have had fish in it for about 3 weeks. I only have a small 10 gallon aquarium with a small aqueon filter. I let the water acclimate to the tank for about 4 days and then went and got some fish from a fish store in town. I asked for some help there and the lady helped me get 6 fish that would be good to start with. I got 2 black mollies, 2 firetail tuxedo platies and 2 rainbow platties. About 6 days in, one of the fish, still don't know which, had a whole bunch of fry, 8 to be exact. Since then the two mollies have died(last week) and I found one of the firetails dead this morning. At first I think I put too much food in because there is a whole bunch of food sitting on the bottom and when I added a plant yesterday all of it came swirling into the water when I was situating the plant in the gravel. Anyway, after the mollies died I replaced the filter and added some ammonia remover yetsterday but when I got up this morning for work I found the firetail dead. Oh, and all of the fry seem to be doing fine. Any idea of what is going on or what I am doing wrong? I would really appreciate some help.
Rookie With Dying Fish. Need Some Help Here.
- Thread starter acoe89
- Start date
fluffycabbage
Fish Herder
have you done any tests on the water? are you using de-chlorinator in your water?
waterdrop
Enthusiastic "Re-Beginner"
Welcome to TFF!
As an emergency measure you need to immediately learn about proper water change technique and begin performing large water changes: A large water change for you will be at least 75% or an amount that still leaves a very small amount of water for the fish to swim in before the refill (turn off your heater and filter while water changing.) If you have a gravel cleaning siphon, use the cylinder end to deeply clean the gravel as you are taking the water out of the tank (ask here if you need more explanation of that.) The return water should be tap water and should be treated with a "conditioner" (a liquid that removes either chlorine or chloramine (your water authority will use one or the other and most modern conditioners can take care of neutralizing either.) Dose the conditioner at about 1.5x whatever the instructions tell you. If you don't have a conditioner yet, Seachem Prime is a excellent product for handling beginner situations. The return water also needs to be roughly temperature matched. Your hand is good enough for the temperature matching.
You can perform another water change in fairly short order after the first one, within the hour. This will greatly help the removal of nitrites and nitrates, which tend to hang within the substrate and filter and can resist being removed with only one water change.
OK, that's the emergency stuff that should happen regardless of whether you have a test kit or not, but if you have one then you should post up numbers for the members to see. They can further assist you in finding a good kit if yours in not the right type. Meanwhile you need to finally get a start on the information you've not had previous access to: the nitrogen cycle. Read three articles in our Beginners Resource Center to start: The Nitrogen Cycle, The Fishless Cycle and The Fish-In Cycle and then begin asking questions here based on those articles. There are also some other good tank startup articles if you look carefully.
~~waterdrop~~
As an emergency measure you need to immediately learn about proper water change technique and begin performing large water changes: A large water change for you will be at least 75% or an amount that still leaves a very small amount of water for the fish to swim in before the refill (turn off your heater and filter while water changing.) If you have a gravel cleaning siphon, use the cylinder end to deeply clean the gravel as you are taking the water out of the tank (ask here if you need more explanation of that.) The return water should be tap water and should be treated with a "conditioner" (a liquid that removes either chlorine or chloramine (your water authority will use one or the other and most modern conditioners can take care of neutralizing either.) Dose the conditioner at about 1.5x whatever the instructions tell you. If you don't have a conditioner yet, Seachem Prime is a excellent product for handling beginner situations. The return water also needs to be roughly temperature matched. Your hand is good enough for the temperature matching.
You can perform another water change in fairly short order after the first one, within the hour. This will greatly help the removal of nitrites and nitrates, which tend to hang within the substrate and filter and can resist being removed with only one water change.
OK, that's the emergency stuff that should happen regardless of whether you have a test kit or not, but if you have one then you should post up numbers for the members to see. They can further assist you in finding a good kit if yours in not the right type. Meanwhile you need to finally get a start on the information you've not had previous access to: the nitrogen cycle. Read three articles in our Beginners Resource Center to start: The Nitrogen Cycle, The Fishless Cycle and The Fish-In Cycle and then begin asking questions here based on those articles. There are also some other good tank startup articles if you look carefully.
~~waterdrop~~
PaBucsFan
Fish Crazy
I have sadly never had much luck with black mollies. I have been told they are can be very sickly but to me it sounds like your tank is not nearly cycled. You likely have very high ammonia levels due to adding fish too soon and over feeding. With the extra food rotting and your fish excreting waste the ammonia is spiking without bacteria to consume it. I would do a 50% water change and buy a test kit to see what your tank parameters are currently at. Congrats on the fry! Hope enough survive to keep your tank stocked!
waterdrop
Enthusiastic "Re-Beginner"
Mollies need (usually) very hard water (water that has a high mineral content.) You will sometimes see references to mollies needing a high pH, but this is often just because high mineral often (but not always) means high pH. Its really the mineral content that they need. They are often lumped in with livebearers like swords, platies and guppies as being an easy beginner fish, but in my opinion mollies need a little extra understanding before taking them on in a beginner stocking plan. To add to the complications, there's a fair amount of variation between different types of mollies!
~~waterdrop~~
~~waterdrop~~
PaBucsFan
Fish Crazy
Waterdrop -
I agree. I was misled by my LFS that mollies were great starter fish. I had trouble at first but I think that was due to the fact that I did a fish-cycle. I recently found out that my well water is quite hard and I now know my mollies are thriving in it as are my swordtails. I agree with your much more in-depth instruction for ACOE89. Get changing that water so your remaining are not being hurt!
I agree. I was misled by my LFS that mollies were great starter fish. I had trouble at first but I think that was due to the fact that I did a fish-cycle. I recently found out that my well water is quite hard and I now know my mollies are thriving in it as are my swordtails. I agree with your much more in-depth instruction for ACOE89. Get changing that water so your remaining are not being hurt!
Thank you so much to everyone for their help. I just got home from work so I'll run out and grab a test kit ASAP.
Waterdrop/PaBucsFan - could I get some more info on that gravel siphon and return water instructions? And I do have some water conditioner that treats both chlorine and chloramine.
-acoe
Waterdrop/PaBucsFan - could I get some more info on that gravel siphon and return water instructions? And I do have some water conditioner that treats both chlorine and chloramine.
-acoe
waterdrop
Enthusiastic "Re-Beginner"
Well by now you've probably picked up a gravel siphon. They are found in all sizes in the shops. If you get a cylinder that's too big it can be difficult to handle in the tank. On the other hand it takes longer to gravel clean if the cylinder is too small. Taller ones can help with deep tanks but personally I never have a problem with plunging my arm in the tank when working on it. I personally use one of those long hose systems called a "Python" but that's so that I don't have to lug buckets to the tank.
It can be a bit of a trick to learn how to start a siphon using gravity. Assuming the system doesn't have a valve in it, I'll describe how to start it. You fill the big clear cylinder with tank water and then point the open end skyward and lift it above the tank a foot or two, watching it closely. There may be a lag but then the water will begin to drop down and you must quickly but gently (so you don't splash your room) re-submerge the cylinder so that the siphon doesn't receive air and stop. You should see the siphoning action begin.
You then invert the cylinder and take care (if you have fish in there) not to suck up any fish. You plunge the cylinder into the gravel being carful not to damage or uproot any plants. If the substrate has debris in it you should see it come loose from the gravel and be pulled up through the cylinder and out the hose along with the outgoing water.
~~waterdrop~~
It can be a bit of a trick to learn how to start a siphon using gravity. Assuming the system doesn't have a valve in it, I'll describe how to start it. You fill the big clear cylinder with tank water and then point the open end skyward and lift it above the tank a foot or two, watching it closely. There may be a lag but then the water will begin to drop down and you must quickly but gently (so you don't splash your room) re-submerge the cylinder so that the siphon doesn't receive air and stop. You should see the siphoning action begin.
You then invert the cylinder and take care (if you have fish in there) not to suck up any fish. You plunge the cylinder into the gravel being carful not to damage or uproot any plants. If the substrate has debris in it you should see it come loose from the gravel and be pulled up through the cylinder and out the hose along with the outgoing water.
~~waterdrop~~
OK so I went and got some test strips(it was the best I could do on short notice. This is before the water change. I'll do another one tomorrow after the water change tonight.
Nitrate - roughly 40 ppm
Nitrite - over 100 ppm
Hardness(GH) - roughly 300 ppm/very hard
Alkalinity(KH) - roughly 180 ppm
pH - 1.8-8.4
I tried to do an ammonia strip but it didn't show anything it showed no ammonia. I tried 2 strips for that one and both showed no ammonia.
-acoe
Nitrate - roughly 40 ppm
Nitrite - over 100 ppm
Hardness(GH) - roughly 300 ppm/very hard
Alkalinity(KH) - roughly 180 ppm
pH - 1.8-8.4
I tried to do an ammonia strip but it didn't show anything it showed no ammonia. I tried 2 strips for that one and both showed no ammonia.
-acoe
waterdrop
Enthusiastic "Re-Beginner"
Just goes to show how worthless the strips are. Get some sleep and the members will have to help you figure out how to find a proper liquid-reagent based test kit.
Everything is still confirming that you need to do serious daily water changes until you know the real situation in your tank.
~~waterdrop~~
Everything is still confirming that you need to do serious daily water changes until you know the real situation in your tank.
~~waterdrop~~
OK, I did a 75% last night and a 50% this morning. I'm siphoning through the gravel as best I can while doing them without trying to harm the fry. The fish have started to perk up, I'll go and check my LFS later today to see if they have a good reagent test kit. Any suggestions on some that are reliable?
Hi. The API freshwater master test kit is the one most often advised and used here it seems. Think you should get it ok in your LFS, if not there are usually good bargains on ebay but that means another couple of days till you would receive it.
owlshead
New Member
- Joined
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2nd that! just got one myself... though I wasn't too concerned about my water specs as I only had 3 very small guppies and was changing 50% daily and doing that for 4 weeks and when I finally got a kit my numbers were spot on...
I got my online through walmart (i know...) for around 20 bucks and shipped quick! a couple days or so... don't know where you live though...
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