New To Fresh Great With Salt-HELP PLEASE!

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fishman89

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Feb 5, 2005
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Cali
OK this is a little embarassing but I have been doing salt water for about a year now. I was looking at the freshwater setups my friends had and I thought to myself those look ok i guess.maybe i should give it a try. so i did I went out and bought 2 bags of gravel at wal-mart i think like 8lbs all together i bought a tetra whisper filter and I bought a 30 gallon tank. After that i set up the tank i then bought some feeder fish to cycle it and then fed them to my turtle. After that I was ready. I bought a molly a black tetra and a red eyed tetra. I hear that mollys benfit from salt? is this true? if so can i put some in my tank? and is this tank overstocked or are these fish incompattible? any and ALL info is welcome even if it doesnt include or involve what i have said.
 
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Well, if you've been in the saltwater hobby for a year now, you hopefully know that a cycle takes about 4-6 weeks to establish itself.

Anyways, provided that you have cycled your aquarium properly, perhaps you should have done some preliminary research on your fish before you bought them. A Molly could use salt, but then the addition of salt to the water will be detrimental to the Tetras, as they most characins don't tolerate salt well.

Also, the tetras prefer to live in schools (of at least 6, preferably), or else they will definitely feel uncomfortable. If you only have 3 fish in your 30g right now, then it is not overstocked.

And as a side note, don't post the same topic in multiple forums
 
well yes it cycled correctly and ok then I'll go buy 5 more tetras. ok so no salt. sorry for posting it in 2 of em its just it takes u freshies so long to respond. in the salt forum it works a lot faster.
 
Mollies don't need salt, they need hard water. Do a forum search for "the great salt debate".
 
mollies can live in pure fresh, brackish, or pure SW with no problems. That's what makes them SO amazing.
 
Mollies can survive in full saltwater. That is assuming they are acclimated properly. Almost all mollies are sold as freshwater. So it will take some time of increasing the salt content of the water by a max of 0.002 sg every few days or so. Slow but can be done.
 
Yep, I used mollies to cycle my first reef tank. The only problem with them in s.w. is that they breed too darn fast and try catching them in a 100 gallon tank full of live rock without a major remodel! There is also the fact that the lfs won't take them until they reach a certain size and from their rapid reproductive rate I quickly saw that they were going to be a major issue. Just to cut to the chase it was way more trouble than it was worth and from then on I just used a couple of cocktail shrimp.
 
i only have 1 molly so it cant reproduce but I dont think I'll try it my 55g is having trouble as it is and I dont even want to think about losing my clownfish over some stupid molly.
 
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