Mollies in trouble please help

[racinman42]

I am at my wits end, finally set up a 10 gal hospital tank yesterday and they are still dying. My community tank is 55 gal and have learned a valuable lesson in buying fish and quarantining them for a week or so.
Out of 22 I have 9 left, they had flashing and no sign of ick, so I treated them with Jungle parisite clear and was told to buffer it with metaflix they started dying 1 after another within about 15 minutes, scared i caused something toxic I did a 1/2 water change put the carbon filter back in used a clorine tab, put in some stress coat and covered the tank for darkness. I don't know if it is parisites I just don't know, I have raised these fish from babies, I bought some new sailfins at Wal-Mart ( stupid move) and now they are kinda acting wierd. I know I have a sick tank now, just don't know what to do to treat them without killing them, seems no matter what I do they die.
My big tank 55 gal is now sick nitrate went through the roof so I put all the fish in the hospital tank cause I can't get the nitrate under control, I have done daily 50% water changes and it won't go down finally put in some amonia clear to take the toxins out of it, just gonna start over with it without fish for a couple of weeks (complete breakdown and clean).
Still don't know how to treat the 10 gal hospital tank to fix the fish.
Sorry to ramble just am so frustrated. I have a whole tank of fry and they are doing great, and can't move them to big tank til it isn't sick anymore.
How do you treat fish when you really don't know what to treat them for?
I am sick of killing my fish, PLEASE HELP!!!!

 

[racinman42]

I forgot to mention I have used salt a tablespoon per 5 gal, raised the temp to around 82 and still didn't help. At times I have even increased the salt like one of the posts suggested with the temp raise (slowly I went up) the flashing continues and they are sitting on the bottom not eating well or not at all.

 

[maestro]

personally i wouldnt put anything in the water to try and treat them unless u know what ur treating, it might cause more harm than good, id monitor the conditions in the hospital tank, do a large water change everyday (check ur tap water also)and see how they respond or if u are further able to identify the cause, but id also try and leave them alone in peace to try and recover, keep moving them about etc is only goign to stress them more, and dont feed them, thats the worse thing u can do, there not goign to starve to death and even if they eat food there body's will have to put all there resources into digestion instead of teh more important issue

 

[ryan]

Are you saying that you added 22 fish to a newly set up tank and only 12 are left?

 

[racinman42]

no I started with 22 mollies from babies, I added 4 new sailfins from walmart
and my daughter bought a female molly and brought it to my tank along with a black male molly and a female guppy, the black molly and the female molly she brought died and the guppy and the sailfins are fine, well they were til the nitrate went sky high, and all my baby mollies I have had since birth are dying with no visable problems, all started to go downhill with the addition of her fish and the ones from walmart all about the same time, one or all must have been sick just don't know which one and with what.

 

[racinman42]

sorry the 55 gal tank has been setup for 3 months all was fine til the addition of the new fish

 

[ryan]

What fish are in the tank along with the Mollies and what are the water parameters if you no?

 

[racinman42]

in the 55 gal nitrate is way off the chart everything else is normal
in the 10 gal hospital tank it is all fine just set it up yesterday I know that was bad but I had to get them out of the big tank, cause the nitrate would not come down no matter how much water I changed, finally put in the ammonia clear to detox it, but still is off the charts, just don't know if it is still toxic or not.

 

[ryan]

Right, it is abit dangerous to add the fish to the 10g after only one day as the nitrogen cycle will not have even started and therefore will become poisonous to fish before it becomes safe, especailly with all that fish waste.

I advice you to do a 25% water change every day for four days and then do 10% every other day until the water parameters are settled. As for the affected fish, can you give anymore syptoms so we can figure out their aliment and try to help them.

 

[racinman42]

they started with shimmys then flashing, now I have 2 that has a curve, more like a break in the spine, the rest just sit on the bottom, or just die for no reason, no signs of disease on any of them