Lilwystynyra

Hi all Thank you in advance for reading and/or posting a reply

OK Here we go! A history of my tank first.
I've had my tank for about 3months. I had it running for 3days before I put fish in it. It's a 75litre tank, I don't know how to describe the filter... I looked on the case but really it doesn't say anything to identify it well. I keep the temperature at 27C and change the water (35-50% depending) every 2 weeks, and rinse the filter, decorations, glass, vacuum gravel etc at the same time. I get the water tested (free) at the pet store the day after my cleaning spree. Oh and I use a tiny bit of salt. At the pet store they haven't given me the stats (so not sure what they're at right now), but I've only once had to use pH Down.

I originally started out with 7 mollies, and 12 tetras. I had 5males, 2 females (terrible ratio I know, but they never explained that!!) So after about 2 weeks of Rose's(male mollie) rampaging and new tank stuff I had 6tetras, 5 mollies (I actually witnessed Rose bludgeoning one mollie and it dying. Very sad) they started getting sick.

One morning, I woke up, came out to feed and Abs (a white female mollie) was dead. Floating on top on her side with a like... white froth hanging around her. This was pretty much the start. I never noticed her being sick at all, but the strange white stuff floating around her (like a 7cm diameter circle around a 3cm? long fish) made me worry.

Then I noticed Poo(male speckled mollie) had white fluff on his left cheek. I did a water change and left them. Note: Never saw any rubbing. Checked the next day, it looked slightly longer so I went and bought some Malachite Green which was recommended. Treated once, then again 3 days later. All the tetra's along with my smallest mollie died with the first dose even tho I did a half dosage as recommended. Then left it for a week and re-treated. It didn't really change much in that time. So I quarantined and went back and got told to try "Aquablue". This didn't work at all and it started getting worse faster. Spread over his whole upper body with a thin white covering with his left cheek (around gill area and whole side of face) being very "fluffy". The white turned gray and looked a little slimy where it was thickest, instead of fluffy. He also lost a lot of weight, though he was very happy acting and ate fine. I tried something called "Fungus Cure" from another store, which seems to be almost the same as the Malachite green. Still getting worse and it started to grow over one eye. So I actually took him to the store today (yay fishie roadtrip). Probably a little stressful, but it's a 1min trip and truly he seemed fine. I got told to use Primafix. 2hours later, he was dead. RIP Poo. When I fished him out, I scraped away the gray stuff. His scales were underneath all nice and healthy looking. So I have no clue what was wrong with this fish!!! He was sick but happy for about a month. If it was a fungus, then why didn't any of the treatments have an effect?!

So now I'm down to 3 mollies, no tetra. Two males (Rose and Doctor), 1female (Gwen Stefani). The female is unbelievably fat (definitely pregnant) and is likely to birth any day now (she has her birthing net). But the two males are both sick now! They have small white spots over their eye/s. Seems to be right in the middle, and definitely covering the eye. So now what do I do?! I only noticed these spots today too.

I've also noticed a strange patch on Rose(largest male). It's been there for about a month and has not changed at all in that time, so I haven't worried but it seems to have gotten slightly bigger over the past few days. It's a circle on his head which seems to be lighter. Hes a bright orange with blue and green stripes across his fins and now has an almost totally white circle on his left temple. Looks kind of like dull scales, but seems to go into his head. Is this something to be worried about too? Rose is 3x the size of the mollies you see in stores too.

OK! There we go. Thats 4 different disease questions.

White floaties around dead fish.
White to gray fluff (fungal?)
White eye spots (I did read about eyespots somewhere but it had no treatment listed)
Dull scale patch.

Posted pics of the 3 mollies remaining. Not very good quality tho. I'm all worried about them . Haven't been their usual perky selves. Just not racing around as much and maybe slightly off their food.

Thank you for reading my LONG post!
Any suggestions much appreciated.
<3 Rach

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Lucy

Hi welcome to FishLore
Don't worry about the long post. We'd rather have too much info than too little.
I'm really sorry about your fish.
It sounds like the problem is you have fish in an uncycled tank.
Here's an article to read about the Nitrogen Cycle
It can be confusing, but it's important to have a good understand of how the cycle works.
In an uncycled tank ammonia from fish waste and left over food can build up to toxic levels. Unfortunatly, this makes them weak and open to disease and death.
It would be a good idea to get yourself a test kit.
Avoid the strips, they're inaccurate. A good test kit is the API master kit. It's a liquid kit and very reliable.
Once you get the readings for ammonia, nitrite and nitrates, we can help you further if this is a water issue.

1) Fish decompose pretty quickly, thats probably what you're seeing around the dead fish.
2) Could be, it's hard to tell from the pics. There's also a bacterial infection that can look like a fungus.
3) Not sure about the white spots on their eyes.
4) Could be an injury or from ammonia or nitrites in the water.

When was the last time you changed the water and how often do you change it?

Meenu

Welcome to FL.

I'm so sorry you are having all these problems. I'm new to this as well, but a lot of people here advise not medicating, or medicating only as a last resort.

Pristine water conditions may help your fish. If you are able to get an API master test kit, your ammonia should be at 0, as well as your nitrites. You should have between 10-20 nitrates. If you have more than this of any of these, it means your tank has not completed the nitrigen cycle.

I read that you have your water tested at a store every couple of weeks. Can you tell us what they use to do the tests?

Lilwystynyra

Sorry I don't know what they use. I can't afford to buy any of the kits they have myself, as I'm a Uni student and they all cost $60 or more.

I said at the start of the post, I clean the tank every 2weeks.

Looks like I'm going to lose Doctor. I don't think he can see at all, and he's barely alive. Sometimes he swims around a bit and looks fine, but then it's like he loses energy and he "falls" to the bottom of the tank.

Rose isn't looking so good, not as active as normal but is still eating.

And Gwen the pregnant lady is happily hopping about in her birthing net, seems no different than usual.

I do get the impression I'm likely to lose them all, which is sad because Rose is very pretty and I was looking forward to Gwen's babies.

After reading up on everything, I'm actually pretty angry with the pet store for not telling me of a lot of stuff when I asked. Never mentioned the fish ratio, they gave me the wrong food to start with. Everyone has said you should start out with a couple fish and keep adding more, and they never mentioned that either! GRRRR. They did however tell me that starting with tetras was a good way to get your bacteria going. Is that true?

Thanks for the replies
<3 Rach

Lilwystynyra

OK well they either have pop-eye or cloudy eye, both of them fungal things. So I've quarentined them and put a little malachite green in and some salt. Is this ok? I've also turned my tank up to 28.

Edit: Definitely popeye. Couldn't see it on Doctor, hadn't progressed enough. But now that Rose is in the medication tank I can see his eyes are bugging out. Hopefully this works and he's back to

michaelb323

My first tank was a 10 gallon, my first fish were 10 neon tetras. I watched all my fish die only to find out over the next few weeks what the nitrogen cycle was. We make mistakes, we learn. You are learning, and in time you may be setting the people at your pet store straight.

As far as the treatment you are doing, that's awesome. I love malachite, I think it does awesome compared to crashing your hospital tank because you had to dump antibiotics in the tank.

Since it sounds like you have not cycled your tank first, you are likely to lose all of your fish, however, your fish may have a much better chance of surviving if you are successful treating the suspected fungal infection.

In the mean time, listen to what the experienced guys tell you in this thread, and perform high volume water changes with dechlorinated water at the tank temerature every day, and you might be surprised to see your fish survive.

Good luck man.

iloveengl

In an uncycled tank, it sounds like you are going too long in between water changes. Bumping it up to close to daily partial water changes will take out the ammonia build up and allow the tank to cycle. You may be over-rinsing things, too. Really no need to rinse decor because that's part of where the good bacteria lives. If you rinse the filter, only rinse it in tank water, otherwise it kills the healthy bacteria necessary for a cyled tank. Once cycled, you can make smaller partial water changes about once a week. Medication will really only treat the symptoms, not the cause, which seems to be an uncycled tank. (The link Lucy provided is very useful.)

I hope everything works out.