I thought of something later on. To reduce the algae growth and keep the water in good shape, the aquarium should never get sun light on it. This is no good for growing plants, but the fish were my priority not the plants. Without sun light the you may be able to go longer with good water quality. Many things work, but you need to choose one method for a while. Changing methods all the time to get a balanced system ends in chaos. Good luck.
My expertise is mainly in marine aquaria, (i keep hawaiian reef tanks) but a few things jump out at me.
One, your high rate of algal growth. this is almost always the result of direct sun on the tank and/or high nitrate levels.
Your plants will remove nitrate to an extent but the only real way to keep it low is with frequent water changes. BTW swords and a couple of the other plants you keep have pretty hefty root systems that will render your UG filter usless. The roots will clog the gravel and create an anaerobic space under the plates. I second Macs suggestion that you scrap it. Perhaps a cannister would allow you to keep it sealed tight and keep kitty out.
Two, your animals die immediatly after a water change. This is counter intuitive. Frequent water changes are the best thing for all aquariums. Large, infrequent water changes can cause wild swings in water quality. Some fish are very sensitive to sharp changes in hardness, ph and other factors.
More likely chlorine isnt the only thing bad for fishies in your water. !0 gallons aint much room for errors. I have had good sucess removing dissolved gasses and other volitiles from tap water by bringing it to a rolling boil for a few minutes then letting it stand over night. Or you could use expensive distilled water.
Just adding a few more thoughts to the table. Best of luck with your tanks.
I’ve gotten a few people to switch to canister filters when the couldn’t keep fish alive and it worked out great. I would always recomend a canister filter to anyone that can afford to get one. Don’t bother getting one for a 10 gallon tank. Using a bigger tank will allow you to go longer without water quality problems. Save your old tank for your babies and mantance on your new bigger aquarium.
the most important “medicine” you can give your fish is clean water, keep the nitrogenous wastes low (0/0/less than 30), some healthy live plants, and the fish will take care of themselves, only medicate if there’s no other choice, for example, fish infected with parasites like Ick/Velvet/Collumnaris fungus, don’t pre-medicate “just to be safe”, all you’ll be doing is making meds-resistant pathogens
i can’t count the numbers of bettas (for example) i’ve seen turn around with nothing more than clean water, and room to swim, keeping the tank understocked is also key
i also tend to “overfilter” my tanks, i want a filter that can move at least 10 times the amount of water in the tank per hour (for example on a 10 gallon tank, you want a filter that moves 100 GPH (Gallons per Hour), i have an AquaClear 70 (300GPH, ramped down to 200GPH) and a Marineland Penguin 550 powerhead/sponge combo (145GPH) in my 20 long, why so much filtration?, it’s a long tank (30" long) and had a “dead spot” on the right, where the powersponge is now, and it’s heavily planted, mulm has a tendency to build up on the right hand side, so even with the water being filtered at the rate of 345GPH, the actual motion in the tank is localized to the outflows of the filters, nobody’s getting blown against the walls of the tank
mollies are herbivorus, good possibility they’re snacking on algae, the fact that you have a green water bloom makes me think that the water has high nitrates, and possibly is exposed to sunlight, it may also have rotting vegitation in the tank (which will increase the nitrogenous waste ratios), do an emergency 50% water change, test your water with the Aquarium Pharmaceuticals “test tube” liquid kits, and make sure to keep the nitogenous waste measurements under 0/0/30, if the tank gets sunlight, put something behind the tank (or wherever the light is coming from) to block sunlight, the only thing you can do to ride out an algal bloom is to wait it out, eventually the algae will exhaust the food supply in the water (nitrates) and die off
fast growing stem plants like Hornwort, Wisteria, Water Lettuce/Frogbit/Salvina, hygrophilia, etc… will also compete with the algae for the same nutrients…
what state do you live in, if you’re willing to pay postage, i could send you some water lettuce plants (as long as they’re not illegal in your area, they are illegal in Florida as they can survive Florida “winters” and quickly overtake a body of water, killing off native plants via light-deprivation
stab-in-the-dark guess here, the black spots could be ammonia burns, have you tested the water in the tank recently, if not, please pick up the 2-bottle AP ammonia test kit and check the water (as an added benefit, you can cackle like a mad scientist when adding the chemicals to the test tubes, that step is optional, but highly reccomended, also reccomended is muttering to yourself “mad, they called me Mad?..I’LL SHOW THEM WHO’S MAD, BWAHAHAHA!” while you shake up the test tube of tankwater and reagants…
I just wanted to second (third? fourth?) the suggest for a cannister filter - they really maximize water quality, in my experience.
Sory about yer fishes dying - it can be very disheartening.
Do you keep a separate bucket just for fish water never used for anything else and make sure no treacherous individuals use it for soap while your back is turned? Do you make sure no one washes the fish nets or other equipment with soap?
Start by testing your tap water. I found that mine tested positve for ammonia, once I took that into account things got better. Also the starter water is wonderfully valuable. A bit of water from a healthy tank can really benefit a new or ailing tank.
Thanks to all for your suggestions.
lee, In fact I have a bucket just for the fish, but I’ve only ever used it for discarded water. I put tap water into 1-gal. jugs and age it, then add dechlorinator and pour it in directly from the jugs. (They are jugs that originally contained bottled drinking water, the cheap kind, or distilled water. I have also used distilled water in the tank, mainly so I would have the gallon jugs.) I would be quite surprised if anybody in this household washed something without me standing over them.
The water is looking a bit clearer although I found a liquid test kit and was surprised that I did have some ammonia (.25ppm), down to zero after two water changes. Now that I can see the big gold mollie he looks a bit scruffy. I’m wondering if he feels bereft now that he doesn’t have other mollies to chase around. He pretty much ignores the tetras.
Sunlight MAY have been a problem. This time of year the late afternoon sun slants in at an angle it doesn’t otherwise and I should have thought of this (because in another room the thermostat is the same orientation as the aquarium, hence the sun shines on the thermostat, and therefore when I get home from work my house is freezing. Well, 60 degrees.) So that was maybe 20 minutes/day of late afternoon sunlight but the sun is strong here.
I am confused about one thing. I have an undergravel filter with airstones. But the thing I have attached to them says it is a powerhead, and in fact bubbles come out two places–at the bottom, out of the airstones, and at the top, through activated charcoal. So what is this, airstones and an air pump, or a powerhead? I was (and still am) extremely unclear about how a UGF actually worked but several people recommended them, so that’s what I got. Now assisted by a power filter (I think–hangs on back, sucks in water, puts it through two filters and shoots it back into the aquarium).
I do notice when I siphon out the water, there’s a LOT of uneaten food in there. These fish are fed by my kid and we have talked a lot about feeding them too much (feeding them is fun and of course he thinks it would be bad if they were to starve). They fast on Sunday. I am going to have to watch him feed them and see how much he actually gives them and how much he thinks a “pinch” is.
MacTech, thanks for the offer, I doubt that water lettuce is illegal here (Denver–it would never make it through the winter…probably not even the summer) but I just got some other plant (wisteria? I think).