Major help needed!!

So, I started this fish tank hobby for my 2 year old! She was gifted a betta fish. I had no idea about anything fish! So I went to my local pet store where I received a ton of help over the past three months! But I’m starting to believe they don’t know quite as much as they’ve led on!
We started with a 2.5 gallon tank, upgraded to a 10 gallon, upgraded to a 30 gallon! (Per store employee recommendations) needless to say my whole set up is a mess, my fish are in stress, & the store just keeps giving me a run around and no help!
our tank is 30 gallons, running silentstream 30 filter, using top fin brand PF-L cartridges.
PH: 6.6
High range PH: 7.0
Ammonia: 0.50ppm
Nitrite: 0.25ppm
Nitrate: 0ppm
Tank contains: 1 male betta, 1 jumbo goldfish, 1 rasbora, 1 blue gourami, 1 Dalmatian platy, 1 Dalmatian molly, 1 sunburst platy, 1 swordtail platy.
(I know, WTF?! I took pet store employee advice everytime and later found out some of my fish shouldn’t even be together!)
My betta had to be quarantined for Popeyes/fin rot/they didn’t know. I treated with betta fix, maracyn and he’s now back in the tank with others per their instruction. He doesn’t swim properly, I’m honestly unsure if he’s still sick or if his fin rot made it hard to swim now... (he gets around... just takes breaks a lot)
My goldfish lost 2 scales today and has started itching along the gravel.
I have every product from api because that’s the brand my store recommends, they currently have me adding ammo lock in my water every two days because they say they don’t know how to lower the ammonia levels in my tank, my ph was high so they told me to use seachem acid buffer, it took my ph severely low. They recommended api proper ph 7.5 , ph went up slightly but won’t move now. I’m at a loss and don’t want to lose my fish, I’ve done everything in my power to keep them here this long and kept adding to my tank because the pet store kept telling me what to do and I now realize it was such a huge mistake so many wrong options! How do I fix my tank???
Gravel bottom, artificial plants lining back wall, 2 big hiding rocks with multiple places inside, 1 bubbler, change my filters with old water not tap water, gravel vacuum once a week (which has me swap about 3 gallons of water each time) 9 gallon water change & gravel vacuum once a month....
my tank was never cycled! I didn’t know it was such a thing until finding this forum today! Please help!!?

Hello, you do have a mess but the members of this forum will help you and your fish out. I would suggest that you need to do a 75% water change right away and make sure you use dechlorinator for the water. You lower the ammonia levels by doing water changes so lets start there. Do not add ammo lock. You will do water changes from now on. That will help deal with your main problem water. Is your Betta in it's own tank if not can you move him to the 2.5 gallon tank. I will stop here for now. There are several other issues to deal with but lets start with these. When you can post your water GH (hardness) and PH

Okay, first things first, take a deep breath. We'll help you through this.
Like you said, your stocking's a mess, but we'll deal with that later. The most important thing right now is to get rid of the ammonia and the nitrites. Do a 75% water change, and then test your water again. Keep doing water changes until there is no more ammonia or nitrites in the water.
You'll have to test the water every day. As soon as you see ammonia or nitrites in the water, do a 50% water change.
The good news is that you are seeing nitrites. That means your cycle is halfway complete!
I recommend getting the Fritz beneficail bacteria. This will help your cycle move quicker.
I would rehome the goldfish as soon as possible. They create a lot of waste which will just make this cycle harder.
Once your tank is cycled (it should not take too much longer now!) we can deal with the rest of the stocking.
Also, stop using the ph altering things. You really don't need them.

Firstly, stop using all the medications and API products that you are using right now except for water conditioner.
You may have a few diseases in the tank - mostly bacteria and parasites infection.

Perform a 70% or more water change today.
Your water change per week is too low.
You should change at least 70% of your water once a week if you want to keep your fish healthy.

You can add salt to treat both the bacteria and parasite infections.
Use 1 tablespoon of salt for every 10 liter of water.
30 gallons will be about 114 liter of water.
You can use about 12 tablespoons of salt.
Treat for 2-3 weeks.

Did you say you change your filter media?
Never any how change your filter media as you will lose all the beneficial bacteria and your ammonia and nitrite will rise again.
You can rinse your filter medias with old tank water or fresh water that have been treated with water conditioner.

How big is your Goldfish?
Goldfish can grow very large.
If your tank is overcrowded, you will have difficulty to bring the ammonia and nitrite down.

As you can see we all agree you need to do a 70-75 water change right away, stop using all the chemicals, if you can move the gold fish to the 10 gallon tank and the betta to the 2.5 gallon tank to ease the over crowding. Continue testing and do water changes whenever you have an ammonia reading. You will have to treat your fish for the bacteria/parasites. There is a lot to deal with here.

Go to the fish store take all the fish back and all the useless product they gave you and demand your money back and never visit that store full of charleton con men again.

If one cant do that i agree with previous posters. Do a large water change. Get rid of ph buffers and ammo lock and all that other snake oil, save the water conditioner. With the fish load you have shouldnt take too long for your tank to fully cycle. Good luck! Sorry your LFS are morons.

Also, cut down on your feeding for 1-2 weeks..
Feed only 2-3 times per week.
This will reduce ammonia produced by your fish.
If your tank has gill or skin flukes, you may have to treat even longer.
After treating with salt for 3 weeks, you may need to continue with other medications.

Anyway, we can't diagnose correctly at the moment unless we knows of all the symptoms. Treating fish are not easy and prevention is better than cure.

Lastly, you may want to get Tetra Safe Start or API Quick Start to speed up the cycling.

Retired Viking said:

Hello, you do have a mess but the members of this forum will help you and your fish out. I would suggest that you need to do a 75% water change right away and make sure you use dechlorinator for the water. You lower the ammonia levels by doing water changes so lets start there. Do not add ammo lock. You will do water changes from now on. That will help deal with your main problem water. Is your Betta in it's own tank if not can you move him to the 2.5 gallon tank. I will stop here for now. There are several other issues to deal with but lets start with these. When you can post your water GH (hardness) and PH

Click to expand...

I can move the betta, ... what do I need to test the water hardness? Test kit I have only shows these:
PH: 6.6
High range PH: 7.0
Ammonia: 0.50ppm
Nitrite: 0.25ppm
Nitrate: 0ppm

FishFinatic77 said:

Okay, first things first, take a deep breath. We'll help you through this.
Like you said, your stocking's a mess, but we'll deal with that later. The most important thing right now is to get rid of the ammonia and the nitrites. Do a 75% water change, and then test your water again. Keep doing water changes until there is no more ammonia or nitrites in the water.
You'll have to test the water every day. As soon as you see ammonia or nitrites in the water, do a 50% water change.
The good news is that you are seeing nitrites. That means your cycle is halfway complete!
I recommend getting the Fritz beneficail bacteria. This will help your cycle move quicker.
I would rehome the goldfish as soon as possible. They create a lot of waste which will just make this cycle harder.
Once your tank is cycled (it should not take too much longer now!) we can deal with the rest of the stocking.
Also, stop using the ph altering things. You really don't need them.

Click to expand...

Ok! When changing my water am I supposed to pour the conditioner just straight into my tank after the refill? Or should I condition the water and then add to my tank? My store has me filling my tank with fish in and then adding the chemicals.

Lajos_Detari said:

Firstly, stop using all the medications and API products that you are using right now except for water conditioner.
You may have a few diseases in the tank - mostly bacteria and parasites infection.

Perform a 70% or more water change today.
Your water change per week is too low.
You should change at least 70% of your water once a week if you want to keep your fish healthy.

You can add salt to treat both the bacteria and parasite infections.
Use 1 tablespoon of salt for every 10 liter of water.
30 gallons will be about 114 liter of water.
You can use about 12 tablespoons of salt.
Treat for 2-3 weeks.

Did you say you change your filter media?
Never any how change your filter media as you will lose all the beneficial bacteria and your ammonia and nitrite will rise again.
You can rinse your filter medias with old tank water or fresh water that have been treated with water conditioner.

How big is your Goldfish?
Goldfish can grow very large.
If your tank is overcrowded, you will have difficulty to bring the ammonia and nitrite down.

Click to expand...

By filter media I’m not sure what you mean! I change the filter cartridge when the dial on my filter turns red. I rinse it in old tank water. It’s just a box of filter cartridges from the pet store. ....

My goldfish is large. I’d say about 5-6 inches.... the pet store recommended him as a companion for my betta because goldfish are “peaceful and bettas don’t Really enjoy being alone”

Retired Viking said:

As you can see we all agree you need to do a 70-75 water change right away, stop using all the chemicals, if you can move the gold fish to the 10 gallon tank and the betta to the 2.5 gallon tank to ease the over crowding. Continue testing and do water changes whenever you have an ammonia reading. You will have to treat your fish for the bacteria/parasites. There is a lot to deal with here.

Click to expand...

I can move the betta, however I don’t have the 10 gallon tank anymore. Will the goldfish survive about 2 weeks until I can buy another?
setting up to change water now!

utahfish said:

Go to the fish store take all the fish back and all the useless product they gave you and demand your money back and never visit that store full of charleton con men again.

If one cant do that i agree with previous posters. Do a large water change. Get rid of ph buffers and ammo lock and all that other snake oil, save the water conditioner. With the fish load you have shouldnt take too long for your tank to fully cycle. Good luck! Sorry your LFS are morons.

Click to expand...

Yes! Once I started realizing it just wasn’t working anything they said, I started googling and I wanted to go wrong their ****ing necks! I was never intending on buying so much! Or so many fish! But they kept pumping stuff onto me! All I wanted was to keep my daughters betta alive! I sure dug myself a hole here!

Definitely add the conditioner before the water, either in the tank or the freshwater is fine

Lajos_Detari said:

Also, cut down on your feeding for 1-2 weeks..
Feed only 2-3 times per week.
This will reduce ammonia produced by your fish.
If your tank has gill or skin flukes, you may have to treat even longer.
After treating with salt for 3 weeks, you may need to continue with other medications.

Anyway, we can't diagnose correctly at the moment unless we knows of all the symptoms. Treating fish are not easy and prevention is better than cure.

Lastly, you may want to get Tetra Safe Start or API Quick Start to speed up the cycling.

Click to expand...

I’ve been feeding 2-3 times a day!!!! How do I know if fish have skin flukes? What are skin flukes? I have api quick start, and also just ran out of a bottle of some terribly stinky “live bacteria” I was instructed to add.

I also have 3 moss balls in my tank... not sure if they should be removed or not. Figured it was worth mentioning!