Dopey Molly

[Christian]

Hi

Im very new to this fish keeping business so will try to explain as best i can....sorry if i go on a bit but bare with me...i could really do with some help!

I have:
2 silver molly's
3 guppys
4 cardinal tetra's
and 1 dwarf gourami

yes i know these are less fish pairs than we need but weve had a spate of bad luck.

Namely, 3 tetra's and 1 guppy died (think this was due to poor water quality), 1 gourami died (hid behind drift wood for a week then came out and died the day after).

The tank has been running for 3 months, its a 100 litre tank and i do 10% water changes every 3 to 4 days or when the amonia level increases. water levels are

temp: 28
ph: 8.5
amonia: .1
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 10-25

Last night we got home and one silver molly (the nice one, the other ones a bit of a bully) appeared very dosile, spent a lot of time just lying on the bottom of the tank. generally appeared to have a lack of energy (not like normal). I fear the worse....will the molly have the same fate as the gourami...?

What do i need to do to save the poor little fella...?

 

[Voorhee]

you should have zero ammonia!!!

and your PH is way to high... bring it to 7.5 slowly..

lower you temp to 26..

keep nitrate unde 20ppm

 

[appleblossom]

from your post and your ammonia levels, i gather the tank is still cycling?

if this is the case then cardinals are bad fish to start with, people often find they die in tanks established for less than 6 months so living through a cycle would be rare.
looking at your post again you have 0 nitrites even with ammonia present....has the tank been set up in the last few weeks?


Also as with all cases of fish cycling, some of the fish additions might not make it through.

Are you sure you havnt had ammonia higher than 0.1 prior to the fish deaths? ie in the days coming up to a water change?

Your ph is strangely high... have you used coral sand or crushed coral instead of gravel or sand? have you added any shells or white rock to decorate the tank?
What is the ph of the water coming out of the tap?

all i would suggest for now is do a big water change, maybe 50% to bring down the ph and the ammonia level.

Maybe add some stress coat or a little melafix but as I said before, some fish just wont make it through cycling.....

edit: of your ph is high out of the tap, try adding some peat (from a fish shop, not a garden centre) in a stocking inside the filter, or add a peice of bogwood. Both can be easily removed should the ph drop too low at some point, and will bring your ph down gradually. Most people would recommend not using chemicals such as ph down.

 

[Christian]

Thanks for the advice.

Update - the dopey molly is no longer dopey - in fact isnt a fella. Biologically proven to be female as we now have a few baby mollys buzzin about the tank. And maybe the other molly wasnt a bully - perhaps just on the pull..!

Anyway, just a couple of questions on your replies.

The tank has been running since Mid June, we have never added coral salt etc, the substrate is just gravel. The tank was running fish-less for 2 weeks, then we added 2 silver mollys and 2 black mollys. Left them for 2 weeks, then added 7 cardinal tetra's. The fish shop advised us that they will be OK....? Then a month later we added the guppys and gourami's. We have had a touch of white spot but added contr spot and that seemed to do the trick....Were really confused, from all the advice we have had and books we have read we thought we were doing things right....if not then please help us as we are really keen to get this right so that the fish can live happily ever after....!

What is cycling, how do i know if the tank is still cycling? What am i supposed to do through the cycling stage...?

Also, we live in a naturally high PH area (apparently its chalky!), i will measure the PH out of the tap tonight to see what that is. When you say add peat - how do i do this. We have a recod 96 so the filter is integrated into the tank...do i put the stocking between the filter media...?

Again...sorry for the long post......please help!