Adding Angels

The nitrogen cycle usually last about a month, but I usually wait 5 weeks and test once a week (do you have a test kit? if not, you can take a sample of your water to a petsmart and they'll test your water free! .

What's the ph in your tank? Mollies like their ph to be base (around 8.0), and the angels like it to be slightly acidic (around 6.0). Are you taking out the mollies after the cycle?

I'm not against cycling with fish, but I do like to only do it with feederfish like goldfish (great for jump starting the ammonia!), guppies (not the fancy ones), or minnows. HTH


BTW, how many is a few to you? I would suggest you keep a maximum of 2 small angels in your 30g, because they get to be 7" max.

By adding plants, and depending on the amount of plants, you can eliminate the need for a traditional cycle. The plants gorw using the ammonium for of ammonia as food. This way the bacteria doesn't have a chance to get at in and spike. So if you have a lot of plants in your tank, then you will only have to wait a very short amount of time before you can put fish in, say a day or two, maximum. Also I would not use mollies as they prefer a brackish set-up, and won't do as well in fresh water. Aswell salt is a no, no with live plants, they cannot tolerate it. If you really want to add fish, try something like guppies or platies.

I was a little disappointed to find out that Angelfish don't go together with a wide variety of other species. One woman in a pet store said that Angelfish are very delicate and can practically drop dead from a heart attack if you make a face at them. I never heard of such a thing, have you?

Never heard that one! Sure, there are some fish that won't go with angels, but I never thought of them as that delicate.

I've never had them be that delicate either.... sounds like someone's had bad experiences with these guys. I've kept them for quite a few years now and I've never had one have a heart attack because of someone making a face at them. They do get quite big though so I wouldn't recommend more than 2 in a 30 gallon as SoCalSunset says and although they can get to be 7" long (which doesn't include the veil-tail species, they can get up to 10" high. Even if you tried adding more that 2, there would be a lot of territory spats with one (or more) of the weaker fish eventually dying off..... they can be quite territorial especially when pairing off. As a general rule, you should start off with 1 in a 20 gallon and then 1 more for each additional 10 gallons.