live-bearer death tank?

[Kansai_Gal]

So yeah. Basically, that's what my tank does. Every live-bearer I put in my tank goes belly-up sooner or later, usually in rapid succession. I bought some painted mollies recently and lost 3/5 in a week. However, my cardinal tetras (sold with no guarantee) made it in a 5?6?/7 ratio. No physical abnormalities to the dead fish, and I've not done autopsies. This has happened basically every time I've put guppies/mollies, etc in my tank. It's been a year since I last tried, so I figured it might be ok, but I was wrong.
My PH is /slightly/ low at about 6.5 but otherwise everything else checks out fine. I have some drift-wood that's been in there for about 2? years now. I was wondering if anyone else had experience or had heard of this 'phenomenon.'

*I've since moved the mollies to a temp isolation tank. Looks like they'll be going in with my shrimp as soon as I get that set up.  

[Fable Fae]

Out of the 30-odd guppies I have, I've only had one death, which happened to be the mother and grandmother of the lot I have now.

I lost her a day or two after she gave birth. I didn't know as much about fish diseases then as I do now (which is still not much), so I wasn't very quick in catching on to the fact that she might have had slime disease, as she was pretty mucusy for a couple of days (she even had strings of mucus hanging from her tail). ): [I was so very dumb for not realize that wasn't a very good sign.]

I don't remember too much about her death, because I didn't inspect her at the time, but she was bloated and belly up.

She was more than likely already ill when I bought her. None of the guppies following her ever died (except for being eaten as a wee ikkle fry maybe lol).

If there is nothing harmful in your tank that could be contributing to their deaths, maybe you just have darn rotton luck with live-bearers and are buying ones that are on their last leg (or uh.. fin. hurrr). ;_;  

[Kansai_Gal]

In the last case, I had 3 male baloon belly mollies who were fine for about a month and a half? Then I lost all 3 of them in 24 hours, and only one of them had any outward damage, and that was from being stuck up against a filter.  

[BluDragon35]

Hmm...could it be that the males are killing eachother off? Usually you have a 2:1 ratio of females to males. That way the males are less likely to fight. Other than that I don't know....you might just have bad luck as dokidoki said. sad  

[Kansai_Gal]

BluDragon35

Hmm...could it be that the males are killing eachother off? Usually you have a 2:1 ratio of females to males. That way the males are less likely to fight. Other than that I don't know....you might just have bad luck as dokidoki said. sad

Well, I never saw them n** before. They seemed rather happy to pretend to fish-mount each other or whatever the term would be. That still doesn't explain the last one though. If one was killing the others, then who killed him?

This has happened to my male guppies and platties as well (mostly female) so I'm just kind of rather confused by this whole thing.  

[The Royal Raccoon]

Shoulds like a water problem. What is the pH, ammonia, nitrates, and nitrites? Is the tank cycled? Does it have a filter and how often do you do water changes?  

[Pyfe]

Usually I have the best luck with livebearers! They have never died on me yet! Of course, maybe that's because I give them away right after they reach their second/third birthday. rofl

I find them to be hardiest when they are born in the water you are housing them in. I usually buy a single healthy (and heavily pregnant) female and see what I can do from there. xd

Have you checked the gravel? I bought some from a garage sale once, and even after washing it thouroughly, it still stressed out my gourami tank. gonk What else... Hmm... Mollies, you say? Try ading salt to the water, if you haven't already. Add a tablespoon or so (sea salt, non-iodized, of course) for every five gallons of water.  

[kage kitsune usagi]

livebearers... ^_^; my family can't keep them from thriving... ^-^; we have to get a new tank for all the baby guppies...
possible problems
are u aclemating them properly?
Ich? mollies tend to get ich more easily then other species
temp
toxicants in the water
ammonia?  

[SilverStarboy]

I think I know what your talking about. I bought a pregnant guppy once, and when she had the babies, they all died  

[fishguy6]

ive got 3 pairs of blue-black guppy all of them bred for me right now i have the adults in with white clouds and babys in a 5 gallon tank