Myraan
Fishaholic
Your biggest problem is you need less fish or a bigger tank or ridiculously more plants or all of the above. The fact that your tank is quite small suggests to me the weird behaviour is caused by irritation from ammonia. Gasping at the surface is possibly from lack of oxygen, but likely nitrite poisoning.
What you describe sounds frighteningly similar to what I went through at the same age you are now. I tried to keep several goldfish in a 18 by 10 inch (so not even 10 gallons, and that was an upgrade from a 3.5 gallon starter kit) with a tiny air driven box filter using an air pump that didn't really pump much air. They died within weeks. A 100% water change might make them well for 24hrs, but no doubt, I was poisoning them with chlorine due to lack of funds of buying conditioner (though the advice in books and mags of the time was to let the water stand). This wasn't even dark ages, it was the 90s. I knew about the nitrogen cycle, but I told myself I knew better. I started changing 50% water each day instead of the 100% I had been because I thought I would disrupt the cycle if I changed water too often. Obviously I just hastened the fishes deaths. After attempting this fishtank thing again with new fish after the first deaths (this time I had the bright idea of using common goldfish because they might be hardier than the fantails I'd had before) - I had exactly the same results. I even tried 10 or 15 (yes you heard me) sticklebacks caught from the local steam..... to exactly the same results.
I spent the next 20 or 25 or so years of my life out of the hobby (thankfully for the poor fish I might have killed) but maintained an interest, reading books, magazines and soon along came the internet. I went window shopping in LFS for fun. I did research. I started lurking on this forum on and off without ever joining. I'm probably one of the people Bruce was thinking about as passing off other peoples teaching as my own... but that's because I found myself able to answer people's problems in my head just because I'd read the same problems over and over.
It's hard to know what's going on in your tank without testing.... but it is what it is and people muddled along blindly in the bad old days with sometimes surprising success. On the plus side you are probably already doing better than I was at your age as it sounds like you may well have a working and mature filter allbeit insufficient to your bioload. If you are using RO water, it is likely soft, cherry barbs, small gourami, etc might be appropriate (although the tank's footprint is likely too small for many fish).
I assume you will be keeping the mollies if you are attached to them, although I do not think they will survive long.
While I can't condone that (and that's coming from me, even now I know what I'm doing I willfully ignore stocking limits, though I did so in gradual manner monitoring nitrate), my advice would be to have no more than 2 or 3 mollies, as in don't go out and buy new friends, they will grow quite large if they survive, and that tank is really too small to allow them swimming space. If mollies are only type of fish, I would be seriously tempted to just try you tap-water.... they like water hard enough that I hear idiot americans (no offense to the non-idiots reading this) will deliberately put them in brackish or marine tanks. And hopefully you do not have both genders for obvious reasons.
As you have no idea on conditions be prepared to do 75% water changes more than once a week, hopefully your parents will let you buy enough water conditioner; I don't imagine they will live long even if you change water often enough if you continue using 100% RO water (which likely doesn't require conditioner).
If they all die, and I am guessing they will, and you want to continue, I would suggest planting the empty tank of RO very heavily, maybe add a pinch of flakes or something to act as fertiliser, and leaving a little for the plants to start growing. At that point start to gradually stock and appropriate number of SMALL soft water fish.
I won't judge on the shubunkin being cold water, as I assume in India many unheated tanks are warm enough for most tropical fish anyway.
Apologies for the rambling long post.... I agree with what everyone else has said, but I can tell you will not listen, so I am hoping sharing my experience might help.
What you describe sounds frighteningly similar to what I went through at the same age you are now. I tried to keep several goldfish in a 18 by 10 inch (so not even 10 gallons, and that was an upgrade from a 3.5 gallon starter kit) with a tiny air driven box filter using an air pump that didn't really pump much air. They died within weeks. A 100% water change might make them well for 24hrs, but no doubt, I was poisoning them with chlorine due to lack of funds of buying conditioner (though the advice in books and mags of the time was to let the water stand). This wasn't even dark ages, it was the 90s. I knew about the nitrogen cycle, but I told myself I knew better. I started changing 50% water each day instead of the 100% I had been because I thought I would disrupt the cycle if I changed water too often. Obviously I just hastened the fishes deaths. After attempting this fishtank thing again with new fish after the first deaths (this time I had the bright idea of using common goldfish because they might be hardier than the fantails I'd had before) - I had exactly the same results. I even tried 10 or 15 (yes you heard me) sticklebacks caught from the local steam..... to exactly the same results.
I spent the next 20 or 25 or so years of my life out of the hobby (thankfully for the poor fish I might have killed) but maintained an interest, reading books, magazines and soon along came the internet. I went window shopping in LFS for fun. I did research. I started lurking on this forum on and off without ever joining. I'm probably one of the people Bruce was thinking about as passing off other peoples teaching as my own... but that's because I found myself able to answer people's problems in my head just because I'd read the same problems over and over.
It's hard to know what's going on in your tank without testing.... but it is what it is and people muddled along blindly in the bad old days with sometimes surprising success. On the plus side you are probably already doing better than I was at your age as it sounds like you may well have a working and mature filter allbeit insufficient to your bioload. If you are using RO water, it is likely soft, cherry barbs, small gourami, etc might be appropriate (although the tank's footprint is likely too small for many fish).
I assume you will be keeping the mollies if you are attached to them, although I do not think they will survive long.
While I can't condone that (and that's coming from me, even now I know what I'm doing I willfully ignore stocking limits, though I did so in gradual manner monitoring nitrate), my advice would be to have no more than 2 or 3 mollies, as in don't go out and buy new friends, they will grow quite large if they survive, and that tank is really too small to allow them swimming space. If mollies are only type of fish, I would be seriously tempted to just try you tap-water.... they like water hard enough that I hear idiot americans (no offense to the non-idiots reading this) will deliberately put them in brackish or marine tanks. And hopefully you do not have both genders for obvious reasons.
As you have no idea on conditions be prepared to do 75% water changes more than once a week, hopefully your parents will let you buy enough water conditioner; I don't imagine they will live long even if you change water often enough if you continue using 100% RO water (which likely doesn't require conditioner).
If they all die, and I am guessing they will, and you want to continue, I would suggest planting the empty tank of RO very heavily, maybe add a pinch of flakes or something to act as fertiliser, and leaving a little for the plants to start growing. At that point start to gradually stock and appropriate number of SMALL soft water fish.
I won't judge on the shubunkin being cold water, as I assume in India many unheated tanks are warm enough for most tropical fish anyway.
Apologies for the rambling long post.... I agree with what everyone else has said, but I can tell you will not listen, so I am hoping sharing my experience might help.
)
