My tiger Barb is dead and my mollie is dieing he had ich, I just started putting medicine in, he started swimming better again, now he's swimming bad again and he is breathing slowly, I don't want him to die, if someone could suggest something to me thanks! If he dies I'm going back to the pet store with my mollie and tigerbarb... I feel bad for him...
I suck :(
- Thread starter Frogki
- Start date
Very sorry to hear that.
My advice would be to put some aquarium salt in the water at the dose reccommended on the box, increase aeration (with airstones etc, just so the surface is agitated for maximum gas exchange) and increase the temperature to about 28c. Salt in the water is beneficial to mollies at it is, they're most often found in brackish environments and I've found that without some salt in the water they can become more prone to ich and fungal infections.
While I think about it, did you cycle your tank? Do you have a test kit and if so, could you possibly do a test and post readings for ammonia, nitrate and nitrite? If there's been a spike of ammonia or nitrite for whatever reason (not always down to not cycling a tank) this may have run down your fishes immune system and led to the death of the tiger barb and the mollie's ich.
Hope that helps and everything gets back on track.
My advice would be to put some aquarium salt in the water at the dose reccommended on the box, increase aeration (with airstones etc, just so the surface is agitated for maximum gas exchange) and increase the temperature to about 28c. Salt in the water is beneficial to mollies at it is, they're most often found in brackish environments and I've found that without some salt in the water they can become more prone to ich and fungal infections.
While I think about it, did you cycle your tank? Do you have a test kit and if so, could you possibly do a test and post readings for ammonia, nitrate and nitrite? If there's been a spike of ammonia or nitrite for whatever reason (not always down to not cycling a tank) this may have run down your fishes immune system and led to the death of the tiger barb and the mollie's ich.
Hope that helps and everything gets back on track.
Yes, please give us more information about your tank: size, population, types of fish. Another way to increase oxygen in the water is to lower the water level an inch or two and let the water from the filter drip down into the tank. Also, daily water changes of about 15% to 20% of water help improve your molly's health while it's sick.
Are you following the directions for the medicine on the bottle? Are you checking to make sure the filter carbon is removed, and you are continuing the medication for the correct amount of time?
I'm thinking it's a problem of bad hygiene and not having your tank fully cycled yet. Is your tank fully cycled?
I'm thinking it's a problem of bad hygiene and not having your tank fully cycled yet. Is your tank fully cycled?
The thing about managers and employees of pet stores is they often have fairly little experience, and whatever experience they do have they throw out of the window. It's a sad fact that they're probably more interested in your money than the well-being of your fish.
Now don't be so hard on yourself, it's happened to ALL of us when we came into this hobby. The best you can do as a newbie is if you see a fish you like in your LFS, go home and read up on a few different websites, post questions on forums, whatever you need to do to make sure it's suitable for your tank and the current set-up you want. It always works to go into a shop with a game plan so that the clerk can't palm you off with whatever he/she "think" is good for your tank.
Now for the goooooood news: you have a very nice sized tank. If you wanted to start again it wouldn't be that difficult, if you wanted to you could take your mollies back to the shop and swap them for something else, unless of course you wanted to go down the brackish route (which I get the impression you don't). There are plenty of fish that would work well in that type of set-up.
Also, how long has your tank been set up? Chances are it's got a fairly good colony of beneficial bacteria in the filter (btw, if you ever need to clean this, just squeeze out the excess gunk into a bucket of TANK WATER and then you avoid killing this bacteria). Cycling is just the build-up of colonies of beneficial bacteria that convert the toxic ammonia in fish waste to toxic nitrIte, and then to harmless nitrAte. It is very much worth buying an API FRESHWATER MASTER TEST KIT, to check the levels of these substances are in check. A good reading should be 0 ammonia, 0 nitrIte and between 10-20 nitrAte.
I hope this information helps, I have a habit of waffling! And also in future if your fish get ich, if you see it early enough, a bit of salt in the water (1tsp per gallon) and raising the temperature to around 28 celcius, plus adding extra aeration via air pumps should help this.
Now don't be so hard on yourself, it's happened to ALL of us when we came into this hobby. The best you can do as a newbie is if you see a fish you like in your LFS, go home and read up on a few different websites, post questions on forums, whatever you need to do to make sure it's suitable for your tank and the current set-up you want. It always works to go into a shop with a game plan so that the clerk can't palm you off with whatever he/she "think" is good for your tank.
Now for the goooooood news: you have a very nice sized tank. If you wanted to start again it wouldn't be that difficult, if you wanted to you could take your mollies back to the shop and swap them for something else, unless of course you wanted to go down the brackish route (which I get the impression you don't). There are plenty of fish that would work well in that type of set-up.
Also, how long has your tank been set up? Chances are it's got a fairly good colony of beneficial bacteria in the filter (btw, if you ever need to clean this, just squeeze out the excess gunk into a bucket of TANK WATER and then you avoid killing this bacteria). Cycling is just the build-up of colonies of beneficial bacteria that convert the toxic ammonia in fish waste to toxic nitrIte, and then to harmless nitrAte. It is very much worth buying an API FRESHWATER MASTER TEST KIT, to check the levels of these substances are in check. A good reading should be 0 ammonia, 0 nitrIte and between 10-20 nitrAte.
I hope this information helps, I have a habit of waffling! And also in future if your fish get ich, if you see it early enough, a bit of salt in the water (1tsp per gallon) and raising the temperature to around 28 celcius, plus adding extra aeration via air pumps should help this.
That's not it, it's just I wanted to start out with something easy and I'm sure that it is not easy with brackish if it's not easy with salt water. Could you give me a bit of advice, what I would like to do is start out with freshwater as I'm a beginner. As I get better at fresh water, I would like to get into salt water. I would like advice on how best to do it. My snail is now dead BTW
It's true brackish can be a little harder to maintain than freshwater but only due to keeping on top of how saline the water is and keeping it stable.
If I were you and wanting to start again, I'd do this:
1. Take your mollies back to the shop, they might get you store credit.
2. Buy water dechlorinator/conditioner if you don't already have some.
3. Buy an API freshwater master test kit - knowing the water parameters and checking often will prevent this happening in the future. They can be quite expensive but you should be able to get one fairly cheap online - DO NOT buy the test strips they're very unreliable.
4. Empty the tank, keeping some water in a bucket, and put the filter in this bucket and keep it running, to prevent any death of bacteria already in there. You might want to squeeze out the filter media in another bucket of old tank water if it's excessively dirty.
5. Rinse gravel, scrub sides and decorations etc.
6. Fill up with dechlorinated/conditioned tap water, put the filter and bucket of old tank water back in, and leave it running for a couple of weeks, checking the water parameters every couple of days and doing water changes when needed.
7. When everything's settled with water parameters good (ammonia 0, nitrIte 0, nitrAte 10-20) and stuck at that you can start stocking. When it comes to this, if you see something you like, do as I said before and have a read up on them and ask questions on here before buying them to make sure they're completely suitable.
Hope that helps and I hope I haven't missed anything (anyone else feel free to add to it if I have!), and also sorry to hear about your snail.
If I were you and wanting to start again, I'd do this:
1. Take your mollies back to the shop, they might get you store credit.
2. Buy water dechlorinator/conditioner if you don't already have some.
3. Buy an API freshwater master test kit - knowing the water parameters and checking often will prevent this happening in the future. They can be quite expensive but you should be able to get one fairly cheap online - DO NOT buy the test strips they're very unreliable.
4. Empty the tank, keeping some water in a bucket, and put the filter in this bucket and keep it running, to prevent any death of bacteria already in there. You might want to squeeze out the filter media in another bucket of old tank water if it's excessively dirty.
5. Rinse gravel, scrub sides and decorations etc.
6. Fill up with dechlorinated/conditioned tap water, put the filter and bucket of old tank water back in, and leave it running for a couple of weeks, checking the water parameters every couple of days and doing water changes when needed.
7. When everything's settled with water parameters good (ammonia 0, nitrIte 0, nitrAte 10-20) and stuck at that you can start stocking. When it comes to this, if you see something you like, do as I said before and have a read up on them and ask questions on here before buying them to make sure they're completely suitable.
Hope that helps and I hope I haven't missed anything (anyone else feel free to add to it if I have!), and also sorry to hear about your snail.
So are you going freshwater? Is your tank fully cycled?
If no to either then ignore this. I'd start filling up the different layers of the tank(top swimmer, middle swimmer, and my fav. bottom feeders). You could get some more snails, ghost shrimp, or a nice school of corys or otos (I like plecos better though). As for the middle guys I'd get some more mollys or another type of live bearers (hi-finned platy). For the top you can get a dwarf gourami or a female betta. Or you can go the oddball route but it sounds like you'd rather have a community tank.
Yea when I first got into fish keeping I bought a 10 g and the next day I went to buy a hi-finned platy that I had pretty much bought the tank for and I asked the guy what would go well with him and he told me tetras(kinda true) and then he pointed to serpae tetras so I got three. I think the platy lived for like four days..he was the coolest fish. I later found out about cycling and that serpae's were fin nipper who go after slower moving fish, like platys. Now I do plenty of research before I do anything..but I wish I had learned the lesson without killing my fish. (the serpaes are cool though)
If no to either then ignore this. I'd start filling up the different layers of the tank(top swimmer, middle swimmer, and my fav. bottom feeders). You could get some more snails, ghost shrimp, or a nice school of corys or otos (I like plecos better though). As for the middle guys I'd get some more mollys or another type of live bearers (hi-finned platy). For the top you can get a dwarf gourami or a female betta. Or you can go the oddball route but it sounds like you'd rather have a community tank.
Yea when I first got into fish keeping I bought a 10 g and the next day I went to buy a hi-finned platy that I had pretty much bought the tank for and I asked the guy what would go well with him and he told me tetras(kinda true) and then he pointed to serpae tetras so I got three. I think the platy lived for like four days..he was the coolest fish. I later found out about cycling and that serpae's were fin nipper who go after slower moving fish, like platys. Now I do plenty of research before I do anything..but I wish I had learned the lesson without killing my fish. (the serpaes are cool though)
Did you say your mollies were sailfin? I doubt tiger barbs would be very compatible as they're fairly notorious fin-nippers, and the smaller the group of tiger barbs the more likely they are to be aggressive to other fish.
I've never heard of "scissortail zebra fish" but what I reckon it is is scissortail rasbora, does it look like this? http://static.howstuffworks.com/gif/scissortail-rasbora.jpg
If so, they're really cool fish but I'd get a few more so they feel completely safe. If I were you I'd return the tiger barbs and swap them for more scissortails but you might feel about that because your dad surprised you with them.
The black mollies will do fine. My biggest worry would be however the possibility of the ich coming back. As I said before I've found mollies to be more susceptible to ich without a bit of salt in the water, and sometimes people even use mollies in marine set-ups.
I'd seriously consider putting a little bit of salt in the water, if you buy aquasalt which is used for conditioning aquariums the general concentration is 1tsp per gallon. This isn't going "brackish", where it is a much higher concentration, so don't worry about your other fish they should get on just fine with it. If you plan on adding any more fish in the future though, if you decide to use salt, avoid fish such as otocinclus, rams and other less hardy fish. Make sure you buy freshwater salt rather than marine salt though, as marine salt contains buffers which are harmful to freshwater fish.
As well as being beneficial to your mollies in the long-term, this should get rid of the remaining ich.
I've never heard of "scissortail zebra fish" but what I reckon it is is scissortail rasbora, does it look like this? http://static.howstuffworks.com/gif/scissortail-rasbora.jpg
If so, they're really cool fish but I'd get a few more so they feel completely safe. If I were you I'd return the tiger barbs and swap them for more scissortails but you might feel about that because your dad surprised you with them.
The black mollies will do fine. My biggest worry would be however the possibility of the ich coming back. As I said before I've found mollies to be more susceptible to ich without a bit of salt in the water, and sometimes people even use mollies in marine set-ups.
I'd seriously consider putting a little bit of salt in the water, if you buy aquasalt which is used for conditioning aquariums the general concentration is 1tsp per gallon. This isn't going "brackish", where it is a much higher concentration, so don't worry about your other fish they should get on just fine with it. If you plan on adding any more fish in the future though, if you decide to use salt, avoid fish such as otocinclus, rams and other less hardy fish. Make sure you buy freshwater salt rather than marine salt though, as marine salt contains buffers which are harmful to freshwater fish.
As well as being beneficial to your mollies in the long-term, this should get rid of the remaining ich.
Okay, I don't want to return anyone, I think they are fine right now, and the tiger barbs are rather large, and have not been bothered by the tiger barbs and vice versa. And about the aquarium salt, do I have to get brackish fish from the time I add it or can I keep regular fresh water fish in it? Help please!
Frog
Frog
like misterking said your current fish will be fine it you add small amounts of salt at a time and SLOWLY acclimate your fish with a little bit of salt. You can get a hydrometer if you want but I'd just go by what misterking said and just put a little bit in.
Also I would strongly advice you to follow the other's advice, barbs do better in schools of 6 or more. IMO I think you should take the barbs back.
Also I would strongly advice you to follow the other's advice, barbs do better in schools of 6 or more. IMO I think you should take the barbs back.
Yeah, at the concentration I posted up there, more or less all freshwater fish should be fine. Just ones who are a bit more fussy than others like rams and otos, and also cardinal tetras and neons (sometimes), might not enjoy the salt, or fish from naturally soft water who don't generally adapt.
Jingles hit it on the head there by saying add the salt gradually to allow your fish to acclimatise. Personally I'd spread it out over a few days, perhaps do it over 6 days, adding 5tsp of aquarium salt per day until you reach the correct amount for 30gallons. Only use aquarium salt, as table salt contains caking agents which, although they're not in a high concentration, can harm the fish.
If you don't want to return your barbs, increase the shoal size, I reckon you'd have space to bump it up to around 6, this might diffuse the aggression. However you must keep an eye out for nipping, or your mollies will suffer, it's too early to tell whether they'll nip yet as they'll be timid from being introduced to a new tank.
Jingles hit it on the head there by saying add the salt gradually to allow your fish to acclimatise. Personally I'd spread it out over a few days, perhaps do it over 6 days, adding 5tsp of aquarium salt per day until you reach the correct amount for 30gallons. Only use aquarium salt, as table salt contains caking agents which, although they're not in a high concentration, can harm the fish.
If you don't want to return your barbs, increase the shoal size, I reckon you'd have space to bump it up to around 6, this might diffuse the aggression. However you must keep an eye out for nipping, or your mollies will suffer, it's too early to tell whether they'll nip yet as they'll be timid from being introduced to a new tank.
Okay, the fish are fine, however, I want to get an invertabrate in there and I liked the looks of the blue pearl, however, I'd like to know whether I can put these fish together... I will repost my species and the size of my tank.
4 sailfin mollies, 2 black mollies, 3 tiger barbs, 3 scissor tails, and I believe that's it. Anyone know whether these would be compatible with blue pearl shrimp?
4 sailfin mollies, 2 black mollies, 3 tiger barbs, 3 scissor tails, and I believe that's it. Anyone know whether these would be compatible with blue pearl shrimp?
Personally I don't see why not. However I did see a post a while back on another thread.. someone's tiger barbs seemed to eye up their shrimp every time they came out.
Why not bump up your barb shoal to 6 aswell? They look great in a group, I'm pretty sure you have the space and it should make sure they don't go for the mollies' big fins.
Why not bump up your barb shoal to 6 aswell? They look great in a group, I'm pretty sure you have the space and it should make sure they don't go for the mollies' big fins.