Hi,

I got 2 molly and 2 platy fish for my daughter on her birthday.

We got a 10gallon tank and all the decorations etc.

We have setup the tank as per the directions, cleaned all the gravel till the color went off, treated the water with the chlorine treatment and let it sit for 2 hours, put the heater in the water. Then we added the fish. They were fine till 1 week. And then 1 orange Platy died. The reason - we were feeding the fish food just like it comes in the bottle like flakes. The fish couldn't obviously eat the big flakes, so all the food ended up on the artificial trees and stuff that is inside the water. We saw a fungus like stuff on them.

So, we transferred the fish to a bowl, cleaned up the whole tank, washed all the gravel,then re-added new water, added the chlorine treatment, added the gravel back and then added the fish again. This time we didn't put any of the decorative plants etc. Only gravel and water was inside.

This time we took care to crush the fish food flakes really fine before putting it so that fish can eat them.

Noticed that we were doing good.no fungus or food getting stagnated in the tank.

But we noticed that one of the Molly keeps banging her head to the tank sometimes. Also, it had something like a thread hanging beneath it. It used to always sit on the gravel for most of the time instead of swimming in the tank except when it is time for food. It was actually a little big in size than the other ones. Again, 1 week passed by. We didn't change the water as it was mid-week, Wednesday. We thought of changing on Friday or Saturday. By Friday, the molly which is big died.

What is happening with the fish in the tank?

We are checking and making sure the temp. in the water is 74. We got the temp. indicator and put it inside the water. The heater is on. The filter is good and not very very dirty to change it. It's been only like 2 1/2 weeks (Jan 28th) since we got it. We fed the fish 2-3 times, once in the morning at 7:00am, once in the evening at 6:00pm and once in the night at 9:30pm.

yesterday, we re-did the whole process again of cleaning the tank, adding new water, adding chlorine treatment and added the 2 remaining fish back. This time we didn't even have the gravel. Only fish, water and heater.

I NEED HELP PLEASE! I don't know what i am doing wrong here. Couple of my friends say, "it will take them at least one month to get used to the aquarium water"

and others say, "get Betta fish, those are very easy, you don't need any filters, heaters etc."

I suspect we are doing something really wrong with the food. How much is so much? I do see that sometimes the food goes down and settles at the bottom. Will the fish eat that? Or should i switch off the filter when i feed the fish so that the food doesn't get sucked up by the filter? Should i crush the big flakes into tiny, fine pieces before i feed?

What should be the optimum temp. for these molly & platy fish? I always make sure to add Luke warm water.

Thanks

Pavani