I Messed up!!

J

jerbear

AC Members
Sep 22, 2004
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Huntsville, Ontario
:confused: About a month ago I bought a tank (20 gal) and followed the pet stores advice on what to do as I had no clue. They told me to take a cup of water from my daughters goldfish bowl and put it in the tank with the goldfish and allow it to run for a few days. I did that. Then they told me I could put in 5 new fish every couple days. I did. 2 weeks later I had 6 black mollies, 8 neons, 1 dalmation,1 pearl,2 guppies, and the goldfish. Well I believe disaster struck as now the goldfish died (which upset my young daughter) the dalmation died, and I read on here that the dots on my fish are ich! To top it all of I found 6 tiny fish bodies on the bottom of the tank which i believe are the fry of one of the mollies. I raised the temp of the tank to 82f and bought super ich cure and have been doing 25% water changes daily.....is this enough to save my fish? Wiling to buy what every I need!
Please help me! I also seem to have very cloudy water!
 
Along with the ick you are treating for I would lay money on some seriously high ammonia readings.
If you don't have a ammonia test you need to get one. I'd suggest you get the entire test kit set so you can monitor the nitrites, nitrates etc as well.
I've never used the super ich stuff, I'm a strong believer in salt and rasied temp for battling ich.
For the immediate danger of ammonia large scale water changes are in order. The test will come into play here in figuring out how much and how many changes you will need to do, but to start, I would do a 50% water change immediately before you even go to get the test kits. If you have "city" water don't forget to treat for chlorine and possibly chloramines, and match the tank water temp as closely as possible avoid adding anymore un-needed stress for the fish.

Once you have the tests post back all of your findings after testing and other's will be able to give you more indepth help and a line of attack in regards to the complication of ich and cycling with fish at the same time. I assume you've read up on cycling since you now know the person at the LFS was a bit off. If not there are numerous threads and a very good "sticky" on the top of this forum.

Good luck!
 
thanks heat

I will go buy the test kit today, and will continue with the water changes..but is the daily water changes i'm doing going to hurt the fish?
And i did add a tablespoon of salt only, as I was worried about the salt hurting the neon tetra's read somewhere on here that salt could hurt them.
will let you know the test readings later today.
Thanks again
 
Welcome to the hobby! Sorry you had a bad first time experience.

FYI, take fish store advice with a very large grain of salt.

Your tank is also severly overstocked. I would dare say that the 6 mollies would have put it at full.

Personally, I would return all the mollies and the pearl (gourami?), this will also signifigantly ease the bioload on your tank and lessen the amount of harmful ammonia being produced.

Next, like everyone else said, get ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate test kits as they are vital to know what's going on in your tank. Also, change 50% of the water daily, as happy said, it will not hurt your fish. I would also recommend you read the sticky at the top of the FW newbie forum page so you know what's going on in your tank right now (and so you'll know what to do if you set up a new tank next time ;) ).

Finally, I haven't ever experienced any FW fish have a problem with table salt dosing up to 2tbsp/10g. The neons will be fine, IMO, and the salt is important to battle ich. I would quit using the medication and use the heat/salt treatment. Here's how you do it:

Raise temp (slowly! :) ) to 85F and add 1 tablespoon of table salt (NaCl) per 5-10g of water. IMO, it should be done for a complete week even if the fish no longer have symptoms of ich (to be completely sure that the parasite is gone). After that week, take a couple days to lower your temperature back down to between 75-78F. Long term, temperatures over 78F usually cause Neons to slowly waste away so it's important to get them back down once the treatments complete.

Once your tank has finished cycling, you may begin to slowly add fish to your tank (after doing research and picking out fish that match your tank as far as aggression and tank size... remember, research is VERY important). And, avoid impulse buying... it'll usually just get you into trouble ;).

HTH and good luck :)
 
Well all it has been an interesting day,ran around looking for test kit and couldn't find on that you could test for both ammonia and nitrate but found a ammonia kit and a ph one (I live in a rural area so had to drive far to find what I did) before I left I did 50% water change and found 2 dead neons. Did test and this is what I found...
ammonia 1.5 and ph is 7.4. You really think its overstocked? Now I only have 6 black mollies, 1 pearl molly(at least thats what the girl at the pet store told me it was),6 neon tetras and 2 guppies in a 20 gallon tank. Bought a 10 gallon tank today as a just in case tank if you think I need to move some?
 
oh ya I forgot to mention I removed the gravel out of my tank except a real tiny bit as I read I had way to much in it, at least it will be much easier to vaccum.
 
With the deaths you're getting close to what I would consider the upper stocking level. Since guppies breed so quickly, and mollies as well to a lesser extent, I count them as moderately high bio-load.

Neon tetras are really fragile fish, so don't stress the deaths too much. Although I think that it is evident now that your tank is not cycled. Daily 50% water changes, maybe even twice daily. Get that ammonia as low as possible.
 
ok ty Happychem.....I dont have to worry about the 2 guppies breeding since they are both males.......but the mollies I do. I did buy a product today called "Cycle" and it states "releases massive amounts of benificial bacteria into the aquarium and reduces dangerous ammomnia and nitrate levels....all natural ingredients. Can be used to rapidly mature new tanks and use in smaller doses for weekly maintenance." Do you think I should try it?Wait until ich treatment is done?
 
Cycle is considered as good as "snake oil" by many keepers. The only jump starter that has been proven to contain the proper bacteria for aquaria is Biospira.
I'd not even open the bottle of Cycle and take it back the next time you go into that store.
Your best bet now, beyond taking all the fish back, is to do the daily water changes and keep monitoring the ammonia. Your tank will cycle this way, but it's pretty likely you will loose at least the rest of the neons. Maybe the store would take back the neons if you are set on keeping some of the fish in there while it cycles?
If you have someone near you that has a fully established tank that you can get some established filter media from it would be a big help for you right now... even squeezings from a dirty filter insert would help.

I know it's not good news... but at least you can make a plan of action for the tank.
Good luck!
 
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