Mysterious Death and Cloudy Water

I woke up this morning to find that my adult dalmation molly was death. As I used the net to get him out, I saw where under his right side front gill, it was lime green in color. Does anyone know what that disease might have been?

I keep my tank like perfectly clean 24/7 and I have become someowhat of a "neat freek", making sure the tank is always in tip-top shape. When I returned from 4 weeks of Christmas break, my tank was in shambles and none of the fish had died, so I gutted the whole thing, new water, new tests, new rocks, new structures, the whole 9 yards. Everything was fine up until abou\t 2 weeks ago, when the water was extremely cloudy. I tried to put in Water Clear tablets, but those did not work.

Here is what's in my 10 gal tank:

1 crayfish
1 freshwater clam
2 pufferfish
2 sunfire wag platys
1 plecostomus (sp?) suction fish
and around 10 or so baby dalmation mollies

I also have 2 lush plants in there so the crayfish can hide.

Does anyone know what might have caused the green growth on the fish and what I can do to get my water clear?

Ok, when you say you gutted the whole tank... did you remove the gravel and clean it? Did you clean the filters at the same time as the giant water change?

If you removed all the good bacteria... You're going through another cycle. Have you checked your water parameters? Even though the tank is very clean... to look at... the water chemistry is most likely messed up.

The timing sounds about right...

Also... I wouldn't use the water clearing tablets... Personally, I would use a series of small frequent water changes... That should help more than anything... With Ammonia spikes or anything...

So are you salting the water? for the puffers and mollies? What kind of concentration are you using? How long have you had them?

Keep us posted...

When i gutted the whole tank, I took out all of the old gravel and put clean gravel in, with the except I did a 1/2 water change. I do put aquarium salt in the tank, per the directions on the side of the carton to prevent disease. I took the water to Petco and they said its perfect...idk what else to do, unless I am overfeeding or something. Again, any idea what the grean circle was?

From my experience, it sounds like new tank syndrome to me. Taking out everything and cleaning it all at the same time has sucked all the good bacteria out of the tank. As to the green on your fish, maybe that occurred after death, similar to when blood pools on a human body after death.
Sorry to get into this morbid discussion.

To start with, a ten gallon tank cannot safely hold that many fish. If you over feed or neglect any maintenance, the aquarium will quickly become unbalanced and the beneficial bacteria will not be able to cope with the heavy biological load. Those good bacteria live mostly in the gravel, so you could have rinsed them out. If that happened, an ammonia test will be positive. The best, maybe only, way to deal with that is a daily series of partial water changes until the ammonia goes back to zero. Live plants will help. Ten gallon tanks are great, but they are suitable for labyrinth fish (Bettas, Paradise fish, Gouramis) and limited numbers of small species like guppies. On top of that, not all fish and plants do well in brackish water. Usually, it's better to customise your aquarium for its inhabitants. Resist temptation and keep it simple. Please let us know if any of this copious advice has helped.

I just performed a 50% water change and the water is 100x clearer, but it is still cloudy. I sucked all of the garbage out from the bottom of the tank (waste, food, etc), but did not take the plants, or gravel out to clean. Perhaps it was new tank syndrome, since I did get all new gravel, ornaments, and plants, however at the time I only performed a 50% water change.

The dalmation mollies are there because my 2 adults had babies, and I have no way of getting rid of them besides flushing them down the toilet, which I am not going to do. So thats why I have so many in there. However, if it is beneficial for the tank to get rid of them and if it puts any of my other fish in jeopardy I will.

The tank is looking clearer as of now so I think I will do maybe like a 20% water change until it clears up (if it ever will).

Do you suggest I suck out the waste and old food from the bottom when I do these changes or should I just suck the water out only? I have a plastic tube with a plastic rope on it (gravel cleaner).

Thanks.

These will be daily 20% water changes*

Measure the ammonia to see if you need to do more water changes. Ammonia should always measure zero. The standard procedure is to suck out the cooties from half the gravel. This leaves in a colony of good cooties in the other half. A highly technical term, cooties are beneficial bacteria, and they make aquarium chemistry work. When things are stabilised, a 20 percent water change every week or so will help balance the relationship between biological load and beneficial bacteria (cooties).