CarinaJo

Hi all! I'm having a real problem with my mollies. I have a 20 gallon tank, lightly planted, lightly ornamented. I had it stocked with 3 mollies: 1 boy & 2 girls and 2 snails. I tested and changed the water right before Spring Break- my resulsts were all zero. The fishies and the snail guys were happy. When I came back on Monday, the boy was gone. Simply not in the tank. None of the kids could have done anything because I was there one more day than them; he was fine when i left. I figure he died and the snails ate him. That left the 2 girls. I tested the water, added more water because some was lost due to condensation. Once again my results are all 0. Tuesday, I get to work, one of the girls has died.

I tested my water again today: Nitrate-0 Nitrite-0 Ammonia-0 pH-7.4 Temperature- 79F

Why do my fish keep dying? It's becoming a little upsetting for the students. They like to watch me use the API Master kit and we talk about the chemicals and how it helps us to keep the fishes habitat safe (I teach 4th grade science). I promised them I'd ask you guys. Please help!!

sirdarksol

Did you shake all of the chemicals really well? Not doing so can provide false negatives.
Other than that, I'm not sure what might be wrong.
I just had two mollies die, as far as I can tell, of starvation. The fish store mistakenly gave me two males and a female, rather than the other way around, and the female got pregnant and drove the males away from the food every time I fed them. Anything like this happening?

kra-z-fishmumm

Not an expert, how did you feed the fish while you were away?, were there any other signs the female was sick? i.e. shimmies, fat tummy? not pooing. what type of live plants? I don't know how the snails afftect water perameters, but I would suggest doing a water change, add water conditioner like Prime.

susitna-flower

If you want to really give your class a science project......

A fishless cycle is a true - real life biology lesson.....and a lot less stressful on fish.

If you want to read just how to do it look up the nitrogen cycle at the top of this page under "ARTICLES".

A very long thread that will give you more to think about along this line is.

http://www.fishlore.com/fishforum/aq...bio-spira.html

As I said this is rather long, but you get down to the bottom and see the relationship to continuing to add ammonia to a tank, and the build up of the correct bacteria, to allow safe addition of fish.....

Putting ANY fish in an uncycled tank can lead to stress on the fish and death....I don't think it is helping to teach children the right lessons about fish husbandry.

Swany

when you did your water change how much did you take out? i had a mollie die because i had to do almost a complete water change due to bad readings and a lot of junk in the tank (never doing that again) but if you do a complete water change you also have to let it re-cycle. also what do you have in your tank, like do u have a full lid (i see that you have lighting but is the whole top of the tank covered?) and what kind of filter do you have?

CarinaJo

Sirdarksol- The children read the directions (I have the directions on the little cards) and we make sure we follow them to the letter. You wouldn't believe how they love telling the teacher what to do! The fish all got along really well, no weird behaviors or aggression and they all fed and pooed well. Um... the girls would sometimes run away from the boy if he was pestering them too much.

Kra-z- The fish were fed once a day with an automatic feeder during break. It has a mix of livebearer food, veggie flakes, and crushed flake food. One of the plants is a fern and i can't remember what the other two are. I do know I chose them because they were low light plants. According to my tests, the water is fine and I always use conditioner when I change. I am removing one of the snails this afternoon.

Susitna-Flower- the tank was cycled using Bio-Spira before the fish were introduced. My understanding of my test results says that things are stable and the cycle is complete. I was very careful to talk to the kids about the proper way to start a fish tank.

Swany- When I change the water, I usually do a 25percent change. When we came back from break, the water that evaporated was just above what it would be if I did a 25percent change. It has a full lid; usually during the school day when I'm in the room, the front part of the lid is up. I have a Marineland Penguin Bio-Wheel 200 doing my filtration; it has slots for two filters cartridges but I only have in one. I also have a flexible bubble tube and a heater.

Does this info help? My mother is swearing that I should just go to a different store but my area doesn't have any small, privately owned aquarium shops.

susitna-flower

SOMETHING IS FISHY! Fish dying...water tests all 0!

I don't want to come off sounding critical, but if you cycled a tank with bio-spira, and have had fish in it for 2 weeks, AND left it with a automatic feeder for a week, there is SOMETHING wrong with the water tests...They just aren't 0.

You have two options that I can see to get to the bottom of this. Take a sample of the water into your fish store...let them test, and write down the results. Don't let them tell you it is OK, get the readings so you know.

OR

If you are following the directions EXACTLY on the API Master test kit, MAYBE there is something wrong with it. If you aren't shaking the second bottle of nitrate solution with enough vigor, it will not read correctly. From what I have read on this, the crystals HAVE to be broken up....you have to shake and hit the bottle on a hard surface for a full minute or more, before adding it to the test tube.......If you aren't doing this, try it....

Once you have a true reading on nitrate, you need to do as many water changes as it takes to get the nitrates down to between 5 & 10.

I have mollies, and several things you need to understand about them....one is they need lots of vegetable matter in their diet. I use algae wafers as one of their feedings every other day. This is in addition to the normal tropical flake, and other foods.

As live bearers, if they are developing fry, they also need a high quality protein once a day, like frozen blood worms, to be able to develop the fry and stay healthy themselves. Then sometimes the females can have trouble giving birth, and will die. Most of the time they give birth with no problem, but if under stress, things might not go as planned. It sounds like your tank has been stressful lately, and should settle down now that you are back to feed, and change water.