Fishes dying after being transferred..

Question
Hello again Karen,
I pray you are well this Sunday morning! As for myself, I'm saddened by the premature demise of a few of my favorite little ones, in the last week I 've lost 12 fishes in total, I feel guilty because their lives were entrusted to me, but with your advice, I hope the rest will pull through, funny thing though, the littlest ones are doing great( 5 blk.tetras,6 neons,6 head/tail glow,and 3 Red gouramis) my roomate and I had to save one gourami when it was floating upside down gasping,ready to go! but it's strong now.
Anyhow, I had decided to go ahead and start my 33 long from scratch, because I just couldn't control the Ammonia, it seemed impossible, even with 50-85% water changes, my Ammonia levels were in the high end(dk.Grn.8.0)but the NItrite and Nitrate were always at 0ppm. When I would do the water change it would be 2.-4. then shoot up to 8.0 in a couple of hours, so I decided to transfer the remaining survivors to my other tanks, but the ones that died were Hardy fish like a 4 inch Pleco,Tri-Hoplo Cat,5inch Brown Ghost,when I moved them to my bedroom tank, there were already 4 Red Parrots, 2 Cory Cats and the Tri Hop-Lo Cat, which were doing fine(the Parrots acted a little weird they started to lay down on their sides to sleep or they would float tail-end up hiding behind the Tall Amazon Sword leaves.
> IS THIS NORMAL BEHAVIOR FOR PARROTS TO ACT THIS WAY? <
My BROWN GHOST immediately got white spots allover,(Hundreds!) and from seeing this ICK problem before, I wansn't going to take the chance of them multiplying and falling down to my healthy gravel bed, trying to find new Hosts, No-way! I feel bad for what I did next, but I had to execute the Ghost! what got me baffled is the Pleco and the tri-Hoplo, the only thing I could think of is the ICK from the Ghost, what do you think? Plus my water was starting to have a funny odor to it, like rotten eggs, so I did 75% and it's okay now.
Now in my big tank, I have this "Oily Film" on top of the water.
>What's that?<
Right now all I have in there is All LIVE Plants,(6 Amazon,5 Mellon Swords and 3 Hedges, 2 Large peices of Driftwood and a few large rocks.
Assisted by 3 Filters (1 Fluval 204, 1 Aqua Clear 50, 1 Cascade Submersible/100) So why do I have this oily film on top and pinkish tint,(WATER DOES NOT SMELL!)I added 3/5ml packets of Cycle and before I added the new water I used Stress Coat to treat my water, but still it's been filtering for 3 days now..
This time I want to do it right, >CAN I ADD 1 OR TWO FISHES TO feed the Bacteria now?<

Please help me out karen, I want to let this tank CYCLE correctly, so that my little ones could enjoys Crystal Clear, Nice Smelling, Clean Days swimming around, and maybe even have some babies..(smile) Hope to hear from you soon..

                          Sincerely, TSL

Answer
Dear Tony, thank you! I hope you are well too!

It sounds to me like you just had too many fish for that aquarium that even water changes couldn't control the ammonia. It's good that you decided to move the remaining survivers in another aquarium to spare them. I must say I am pretty dissapointed about your brown ghost. Although that's not my first choice at all when a fish gets ICK. I do understand your situation but would have tried alternatives that are a bit more humane. Sorry.

Besides that, About your parrot cichlids. Are your parrots dyed? Some are not but the majority are and sometimes that means a very harmful experience for the fish and the reason I am mentioning this because I most often see the dyed variety of Red parrot cichlids to exhibit the strange behavior of "head standing" with their tails up in the corner and other odd behavior. The normal un-dyed variety I have yet to see do this and I don't believe they ever do.
Perhaps if yours are in fact dyed that they may be more stressed out in otherwise "less-stressful" situations that what might affect other fish.  In otherwords, they may just not be that hardy when their dyed and put through that process.

*But then again every fish has their own personality and is an individual and some may act totally different and the reverse of what it says about them in the books. I have found this out in many situations.

About your pleco and Hoplo Cat....Hmm...I would imagine stress from ammonia to have really gotten to them. Plus any temperature, pH or other readings to have been different from what they were use to probably greatly contributed. And after living in high ammonia, that may have just about finished them off unfortunately. :(
What may have also greatly harmed them is I noticed you mentioned a "rotten egg" smell. This is due to anerobic bacteria conditions. These Anerobic bacteria live in oxygen-less enviroments. This can be un-vacummned gravel, that turns into so-called "bad spots" where even good bacteria can't even survive. Or even clogged and very dirty filters. Anerobic conditions are both good in bad. Good in that they do remove some nitrate but more so bad in that they release gases that smell like rotten eggs and is VERY toxic to fish.  This is a serious problem and you must become the mystery solver to find out what could be the problem in causing anerobic conditions in your aquarium.

A healthy aquarium should never smell like rotten eggs!

An oily film on top of the water is most often caused by overfeeding or feeding certain types of foods quite frequently. I have noticed in my experience that sinking shrimp pellets, algae wafers and other "sinking" bottom feeder foods have a tendancy to create a film on the water surface that can even appear as oil! Your best bet is to increase your water changes a bit more, make sure your filters are clean (in aquarium water only please) and for immediate removal of the film, take a clean dry paper towel and lightly drap it across the top surface of the water and lift it immediately after a second or two. This will pick up much of the oily film but if it continues to be a problem I believe you'll have to do more frequent and larger water changes.

Okay, now since you asked me before to guide you through because you wished to start over with your aquarium--and now you are.... I'll do my best~

1.) Be prepared for lots of patience
2.) Consider if you wish to fish-less cycle or fish cycle
(Fishless cycling is much more humane than subjecting fish to possible high ammonia levels and all. Like it was once said by a well-knowledgeable fishkeeper "It seems Ironic that the first thing you had to do to get started in the hobby was first make some fish suffer or die?")
Here is a well-written article about "fishless" cycling-
"http://fishtanksandponds.info/setting-up/cycling/fishless
_cycling.htm"

3.) Once you have your aquarium cycled (which by the way, feel free to email me if you have any trouble with it)
Hopefully you have been studying and researching what species interests you and whom are compatible with whom. Even though your aquarium has cycled you'll need to stock slowly and unfortunately have to test after each new additions to be sure to not get any high ammonia spike due to the new bio-load put on your bacterial colonies, they will need time to adjust to the new load and it will go away if you ever do get a spike.
*please try not to overstock again...
If you want to have a particular theme for your aquarium (theme by I mean a collection of fish that can represent a certain part of the world or only fish from the family "Anabantoid" for example.
I have a good referance for many community schemes that you might be interested in that you may consider for your 33Gallon if you'd like) Just ask...

Or perhaps are you going to add the 5 black tetras, 6 Neons, 3 red gouramis and 6 head and taillight tetras? That sounds like a beautiful and interesting aquarium to me right there. I don't think you'd need anymore to make it more wonderful.

I hope i've answered all your questions! Let me know if I have left any out and as always feel free to write if you have anymore problems....

Best wishes and Take care Mr.Tony,
Karen~
((I'm very sorry for all the bad luck you've had...I do know how it feels. But I know you'll get a fresh and good start this time))