New Aquarium With Fish Doing Cycle - Worried!

I have no experience with fry, but how big are they atm, can the adults eat them? I might wait if I were you because they are probably already stressed so they may end up eating the fry.

 

They are a week and 4 days old. They are still pretty small. Not sure if the mollies could fit them in their mouth but they might. Some are bigger than the others.

 

They are a week and 4 days old. They are still pretty small. Not sure if the mollies could fit them in their mouth but they might. Some are bigger than the others.

I would leave them.

 

Did a 50 % water change with prime and stability. What do we do tomorrow? Check levels?

 

Did a 50 % water change with prime and stability. What do we do tomorrow? Check levels?

First step is complete. You can take a deep breath and relax a little tomorrow you'll check levels and repeat. You'll have to repeat this process until you have 0 ammonia 0 nitrites and you have nitrates. Once that happens you are then cycled and can go to weekly water changes. Keep monitoring your levels a couple times a week to make sure everything is still on track!

 

Sounds good!! When taking out the water you clean the gravel to right??

 

I would travel vac every day. With the amount of water and frequency you could probably get away with every other day.

 

With the prime and stability how much do we use tomorrow?? If we did the 1 capful of each today.

 

I'm not sure about stability. I believe its half a capful. Instructions will be on the bottle. As for prime, wait to see what the tests show. If your ammonia is still high you'll have to adjust dosage.

 

They all seem to be less energetic and I keep seeing our male trying to pregnant one of the females. Sigh

 

Some chasing is expected behavior in Mollys. Especially, 1 male to 2 females. Also 10 gallons is quite small for the stocking you about to end up with. What are your plans for the fry? If you do not intend to keep them, let them out inot the tank and let nature takes it's course. You may end up with one or two surviving anyway. At any rate trying to raise the fry in the same tank you are still cycling will be very difficult.

 

We have been thinking about letting them out. They are getting pretty big though. Might be too big to eat. Also there was 3 before in the tank since they been born and they didn’t seem interested in eating them.

 

Prime or other ammonia detoxifiers and water changes (which Will Not kill your bacteria!) . Feel free to update us on how things are going, hopefully your cycle will get going soon! Also live bearing fish do not have maternal/paternal instincts like mammals (I've seen a mother platy devour her own newborn fry!) if one of your fish is showing aggression this is likely due to stress either caused by the water conditions or the restricted space of your aquarium. If your tap water contains ammonia only do water changes if the levels in your aquarium are higher than the levels from the tap.

 

We did a 50% water change with prime last night. Will check when I get home from work what the levels are. Our male keeps trying to mate with the female that was being chased and gasping for air for awhile. The one that was chasing seemed to stop chasing last night but we noticed this morning she was doing it again. I think she mostly does it when she’s looking for food. I was told to add in stability too since our BB was most likely not working from the beginning since we added it in the same time as the dechlorinator. So we will see. They were all alive this morning. (Including all the fry)

Our ammonia was 4.0 and our tap water was .50 but we were just using a plain dechlorinator that didn’t get rid of the ammonia too. Didn’t know our tap had ammonia in it until yesterday.

 

It was a good thing that you tested the tap! that is good to know. I think you're doing everything that you can and if you keep up the hard work I think your tank should cycle soon *finger crossed*. This has become a very popular thread be sure to tell us what happens and when your tank stabilizes

 

Also I read that our female may get stressed out and die because of the attempts of the male trying to mate when there is only one other female. Anyone know about any of this? I wish petco would of told all of this before we got 1 male and 2 females.

I really appreciate all the help!! Would be lost if I didn’t find this site.

 

Yeah, live bearing males can be huge bullies that’s why they suggest getting at least two females per one male but sometimes it still isn’t enough to curb the aggression.

 

Yeah he wouldn’t stop last night. Poor female. I could tell she didn’t like it. He is a balloon molly which I read they have a shorter lifespan because of the way they look. I wonder if that would affect the fry too. The other 2 are Dalmatian mollies.

 

It’s hard to watch sometimes. I don’t think his being a different strain should effect the offspring at all, ballon mollies are still mollies just a different breed like dogs. Also live bearer females can store sperm for a long time so these babies likely aren’t even his!

 

So yesterday our levels were ammonia 4.0 nitrate 0 and nitrite 0


Today our levels are
Ammonia 1-2.0 can’t really tell
Nitrite 0.25
Nitrate 0-5.0 was a little orangish.
What do we do? This seems worse than before....

Today our levels are
Ammonia 1.0-2.0
Nitrite 0.25
Nitrate 0-5ppm
Is this bad??!
What do we do now?

Ph 7.5

 

This is good! Your ammonia is almost cut in half. I'd repeat the same thing as yesterday. Water change, 50%. Treat with prime and add stability. Prime you only do 1/4 dose of what you did yesterday. Stability is half today.

 

Ok done! Our molly is gasping bad for air after this change. Any suggestions?

 

It does get better. My 10 gallon spiked 2 out of 3 molly's didn't make it. The one female molly had ammonia "burns" and was gasping very badly. She is now better after doing 40-50% water changes daily last week. My ammonia is down to 0.25 now (was 0 until I had to add an injured fish). I have been using Prime, Stability and Stress guard. She is looking 100 times better and is back to eating and not gasping. Just keep testing and doing the water changes

 

I can't help with the molly and its breathing. The last time something like that happened to me was almost two months ago. I had treated my entire tank for fungus and lost a catfish.

But I will say if your mollies survived with 4ppm ammonia I think you're gonna be alright. Just keep checking those levels. Everyday. Treat with prime and stability for 7 days. When your tests consistently read 0 ammonia and 0 nitrites with around 5-10 nitrates for 2+ days you're cycled. You can discontinue using stability but with every water change use prime.

Keep checking levels every couple days until you know what your fish are producing for waste and how often you should be doing water changes. Good job and keep us posted

 

Thank you guys!!
I will let you know what our levels are tonight when I get home! Do you recommend the 50% again with 1/4 prime and half cap stability? Or does it depend on what the ammonia is?

It does get better. My 10 gallon spiked 2 out of 3 molly's didn't make it. The one female molly had ammonia "burns" and was gasping very badly. She is now better after doing 40-50% water changes daily last week. My ammonia is down to 0.25 now (was 0 until I had to add an injured fish). I have been using Prime, Stability and Stress guard. She is looking 100 times better and is back to eating and not gasping. Just keep testing and doing the water changes

They have no sign of ammonia burns or anything. Which is surprising when at first our ammonia was 8.0. Even our fry didn’t die. ? So odd. Anyway, we have stress coat? How do you use those with the prime and stability? I am thinking it’ll help with the stress. We were using it until I started with the prime/stability. 2 days ago. She eats but she is always gasping after our water change. Then seems fine the next day.

 

Depends on ammonia. I'd still do a 50% change until your under 1ppm for ammonia. According to seachem it doesn't necessarily hurt to dose more with prime. Stability will be half a cap for seven days. So you have 6 more days of it. Let us know what those levels are and we can help you.

 

I just use the Seachem stress coat (not the API stress coat) per the directions. The stress coat helps with the healing process. I have a beat up small angelfish and his fins have had amazing recovery in the last few days with the help of the stress coat.

The water change might just "excite" her and just breathing heavy. As long as you are adding the prime and stability in to the buckets prior to putting it in to the tank during water changes, you should be okay.

My lone Molly will swim over to the fresh water flow and "gasp" during water changes. But she is also back to playing in the bubblier and trying to eat the zucchinI that is for the snails. I call it her shower and massage time lol

 

I just use the Seachem stress coat (not the API stress coat) per the directions. The stress coat helps with the healing process. I have a beat up small angelfish and his fins have had amazing recovery in the last few days with the help of the stress coat.

The water change might just "excite" her and just breathing heavy. As long as you are adding the prime and stability in to the buckets prior to putting it in to the tank during water changes, you should be okay.

My lone Molly will swim over to the fresh water flow and "gasp" during water changes. But she is also back to playing in the bubblier and trying to eat the zucchinI that is for the snails. I call it her shower and massage time lol

Have you ever had problems with your mollies not going to eat during your cycling process? This morning only the gasping one was at the top eating and the other 2 stayed at the bottom catching the food. They’d go to the top for like a second and go back down. Which is really weird because they are always wanting food so it worries me when they didn’t go up for it. But I think they were sleeping when I put it in so they probably couldn’t tell it was there? We do add the prime and stability in the buckets before we put them in the tank. She only gasps after all the water is back in. She has a corner where she will always go to and sit there for awhile. Then start swimming around again.

 

Yes, When the ammonia was really high they were very lethargic and didn't want to eat (before the other 2 passed). I would have to remove the excess food with a turkey baster since I wouldn't do the water changes until the evening when I got home from work. I would always offer it. The best description I have for how my lone molly "feels" is like how we feel after the flu. Kinda hungry but not 100%

but yes during my fish in cycling I could tell when the water perimeters would change because of how they were acting.

 

Oh no. I am wondering what is going on then. Our ammonia is way lower than before but our nitrite and nitrate is raising when it was always at 0. Could that be why maybe? They were swimming around fine on the bottom just wouldn’t go to the top like they always would. They show no signs of disease or ammonia poisoning besides gasping and today not going for the food. there is never any left over food with those 3. Lol I have been only feeding once a day.

 

Oh no. I am wondering what is going on then. Our ammonia is way lower than before but our nitrite and nitrate is raising when it was always at 0. Could that be why maybe? They were swimming around fine on the bottom just wouldn’t go to the top like they always would. They show no signs of disease or ammonia poisoning besides gasping and today not going for the food. there is never any left over food with those 3. Lol I have been only feeding once a day.

Nitrites are just about as Poisonous as Ammonia.

They very well could have been "sleeping in" lol

 

Just is weird. Wouldn’t you think the fry would die before the adults? We have about 10 and they all are always swimming and come up for food. The cycling process is so confusing. Lol

 

I would have thought so too. Yes I do agree the cycling process is confusing. I had 3 tanks 5 years ago and none of my fish died and I never knew about cycling the tank. I just restarted keeping fish back in Nov. My 38 gallon was a fishless cycle which took forever. I added fake jelly fish just so there was something to look at. My 10 gallon was a fish in cycle. I have to watch it all the time now as I get random ammonia spikes. My Nitrate keep at about 10-20 ppm and my Nitrites in that tank keep at about 0. I have heard the smaller the tank the harder it is to keep things "normal"

 

I would have thought so too. Yes I do agree the cycling process is confusing. I had 3 tanks 5 years ago and none of my fish died and I never knew about cycling the tank. I just restarted keeping fish back in Nov. My 38 gallon was a fishless cycle which took forever. I added fake jelly fish just so there was something to look at. My 10 gallon was a fish in cycle. I have to watch it all the time now as I get random ammonia spikes. My Nitrate keep at about 10-20 ppm and my Nitrites in that tank keep at about 0. I have heard the smaller the tank the harder it is to keep things "normal"

You still get ammonia spikes even when it is cycled? I wish we would of went with the 20 gal but we ended up with the 10. They are expensive.

We thought having fish would be easy and you could just put them in treated water and they’d be fine.
Clearly we were wrong. But petco never told us about “cycling” or putting in the BB a day after you put in the dechlorinator. So we put them in all right away and right in the tank. Not in the buckets of water. We had 2 angels and they died right away. Our mollies made it through everything so far. We are on week 3 and were just now learning about cycling the tank. Sigh petco also told us we should also have 5 snails (one died) or so we thought because he was floating but I read that could be because their lung could be trapped. I’ve heard they can cause ammonia spikes too. I think I may give up if they all die. Lol

 

We thought having fish would be easy and you could just put them in treated water and they’d be fine.
Clearly we were wrong. But petco never told us about “cycling” or putting in the BB a day after you put in the dechlorinator. So we put them in all right away and right in the tank. Not in the buckets of water. We had 2 angels and they died right away. Our mollies made it through everything so far. We are on week 3 and were just now learning about cycling the tank. Sigh petco also told us we should also have 5 snails (one died) or so we thought because he was floating but I read that could be because their lung could be trapped. I’ve heard they can cause ammonia spikes too. I think I may give up if they all die. Lol

You're almost there! The beneficial bacteria is converting the ammonia to nitrites which is why that's going up and your ammonia is going down. Then those nitrites get converted to nitrates but another set of BB. That's why those are going up. Some nitrates get absorbed by plants but most have to be removed with water changes.

Sadly you're learning about a fish in cycle the hard way. I was in the same spot 4 months ago when I bought my first tank from petsmart. A little 10 gallon that we over stocked. All our fish died. Over and over. I went through almost $100 in fish because petsmart claimed the fish were ill, our water was too hard, or this or that. Over the course of two weeks! It wasn't until I started researching on my own and joined this forum that things started looking better.

We did just have a small ammonia spike, but water changes and prime helped with that. The larger the tank the easier levels are too manage. We have a 55 gallon now and I love it. We still have stocking issues, but our fish are interacting fine and seem to be healthy. Surprisingly everyone gets along and we haven't had a death in almost 2 months. So yay me!

 

Yeah it was the first one since it has been cycled. But I had left my son (13) in charge of the Molly's. I was the one cleaning it most of the time. It very well could have been from over feeding and creating a higher bio load then what was "normal" or He just wasn't doing enough of a water change on it or they got sick and I didn't notice in time which created stress which increases the ammonia. Lots of different factors. Mine ammonia didn't spike to that high but it was at 4ppm all of a sudden. I was only testing the water right before their water changes.

 

Oh my gosh. What is up with these pet places? Why do they let their workers tell all these people all the wrong information?! Thankfully we got to return our dead angels and get our money back. There was no way I was letting them get away with telling us all the wrong stuff and wasting our money. I am praying our levels are better today and not worse!! Is it normal for fish to die in fish in cycles? We are attached to them. We even named them thinking they wouldn’t have to go through all this.

Yeah it was the first one since it has been cycled. But I had left my son (13) in charge of the Molly's. I was the one cleaning it most of the time. It very well could have been from over feeding and creating a higher bio load then what was "normal" or He just wasn't doing enough of a water change on it or they got sick and I didn't notice in time which created stress which increases the ammonia. Lots of different factors. Mine ammonia didn't spike to that high but it was at 4ppm all of a sudden. I was only testing the water right before their water changes.

We did overfeed in the beginning to because of the food saying feed 2-3 times a day then we were wondering what would happen with all that food on the bottom and then that’s when we really started to look into all of this. We were also told to overfeed by petco or the snails would die. Ugh! The snails are still alive almost 3 weeks in. They must get food somehow. We were testing the water after feedings for awhile and then I read not to do that as it will test high for ammonia sometimes. But it was still high when I didn’t feed them.

 

I went to petsmart last week to purchase mondo grass thinking it was fully aquatic as that what they sell it as. Got home, checked online as to how to plant it only to find out its terrestrial, not aquatic! O took it back and told them. Got my money back but she put it right back in the tank to sell to some other unsuspecting fool. The pet store people are there to sell stock, not educate customers. I tried once to help a mom as she was purchasing a new tank for her son and the employee basically told her not to listen to me because I kill my fish *eye roll*

 

Oh my gosh. What is up with these pet places? Why do they let their workers tell all these people all the wrong information?! Thankfully we got to return our dead angels and get our money back. There was no way I was letting them get away with telling us all the wrong stuff and wasting our money. I am praying our levels are better today and not worse!! Is it normal for fish to die in fish in cycles? We are attached to them. We even named them thinking they wouldn’t have to go through all this.

Yes death can/does happen with fish in cycles depending on the fish. Molly's are hardier than Angels. Angels are rather sensitive to parameter changes. Also Angels need at least a 20 gallon as they can get up to 6-8 inches tall. My little Angel is in the 10 gallon as a hospital tank because of his fins (he's also quarter size). Also Molly's like Brackish water. If you look at the aquarium salt it can help with Nitrites/nitrates (I'm not at home so I can't read the box)

I am thankful that the Fish guy at our Petco is very knowledgeable. He has been there a long time (5+ years) and has huge fish tanks himself.

What type of snails do you have? mystery snails have a huge bio load (poop alot) I have 2 in my 10 gallon now but they had to be move to a 2.5 until I got the ammonia down. 5 snails is a lot for a 10 gallon. Try zucchinI for the snails until you tank can get going again. Most snails need suplimental feeding as algae is not enough. They need veggies that have calcium in them. spinach, broccoli, zucchinI (as some in it and they love it). Snails require special stuff too. Algae and fish food just aren't enough for them. They can also get close to 2" which is 2 gallons just for each one.

 

Yes death can/does happen with fish in cycles depending on the fish. Molly's are hardier than Angels. Angels are rather sensitive to parameter changes. Also Angels need at least a 20 gallon as they can get up to 6-8 inches tall. My little Angel is in the 10 gallon as a hospital tank because of his fins (he's also quarter size). Also Molly's like Brackish water. If you look at the aquarium salt it can help with Nitrites/nitrates (I'm not at home so I can't read the box)

I am thankful that the Fish guy at our Petco is very knowledgeable. He has been there a long time (5+ years) and has huge fish tanks himself.

What type of snails do you have? mystery snails have a huge bio load (poop alot) I have 2 in my 10 gallon now but they had to be move to a 2.5 until I got the ammonia down. 5 snails is a lot for a 10 gallon. Try zucchinI for the snails until you tank can get going again. Most snails need suplimental feeding as algae is not enough. They need veggies that have calcium in them. spinach, broccoli, zucchinI (as some in it and they love it). Snails require special stuff too. Algae and fish food just aren't enough for them. They can also get close to 2" which is 2 gallons just for each one.

They are zebra snails. Just raw zuchinnI or cooked? Does it have to be super small for them to eat? They seem to hardly move so I feel like it will just sit in the tank. The fish guy at our petco I heard he’s worked at another pet store before. He’s young. Probably my age (24) and he claimed he had fish of his own and he knew we had no idea what we were doing. Makes me wonder how his fish are alive by what he told us. He also told us NOT to float the bags before we put them in our brand new tank. He said (no one does that) and the water they gave us should be the same as our water. We thought that was off. I think that is what killed our angels. The one started laying upside down almost right after we put them in the tank. They also never came up for food the first 2 days.

I went to petsmart last week to purchase mondo grass thinking it was fully aquatic as that what they sell it as. Got home, checked online as to how to plant it only to find out its terrestrial, not aquatic! O took it back and told them. Got my money back but she put it right back in the tank to sell to some other unsuspecting fool. The pet store people are there to sell stock, not educate customers. I tried once to help a mom as she was purchasing a new tank for her son and the employee basically told her not to listen to me because I kill my fish *eye roll*

That is sad. And very unprofessional. I am really glad I found this site! Without your help we’d probably still be doing 25% water changes and just using our stress coat dechlorinator and our nitrates and nitrites staying at 0 and our ammonia NEVER going down.