75 Gallon Community Tank (Live Breeders and Fry)

T

twodaend

AC Members
Jun 28, 2006
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Alsip, IL
I have a 75 gallon tank with live breeders of mollies (2 male, 8 female)and platies (2 male, 2 female) and 1 male betta. I plan on getting about 5 cories in another month. I noticed today that 1 of my black mollies must have gave birth to about 5 babies as that is all I see. I was wondering if I should take them out or let nature take it course?

My plan on getting this tank was to have live breeders and allow the babies to get enough size to feed to my oscar in another 75 gallon. There is no need to save all the babies as i don't want to be over run with live breeders. Thus the reason why I was thinking of leaving them in the tank and let the strongest survive. With 8 female mollies, I was thinking I would have babies all the time.

Will leaving the fry in the tank allow some of them to survive or will they all die or be eaten no matter what? I tried to create a lot of hiding place to give them the best chance possible. My wife wanted color thus the fake plants.

 
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You might want more floating cover for fry if you want to collect many of them.
 
twodaend I have found that bysignificantly increasing the amount of plants and particularly floating plants to your tank you will greatly increase the number of fry that will survive. Several months ago I was lucky if any of my fry survived in my main tank but now I have plenty of floating plants and I now take out around two dozen babies a week. I would advise taking them out not so much because they get eaten but because you cannot effectively feed small fry in such alarge tank as most of the food is eaten by the adult fish. For rapid growth and concentrated feeding you need a smaller grow out tank.I also feed my adult fish 3 small meals a day to make sure they are well fed and so leave the little ones alone. By doing this though you have to make sure that your cleanup and water change regimes are regular.
 
I'm thinking I need to add a nylon over my filter intake tubes, but I'm not sure how. I added about 6 ghost shrimp to see how they would do and that my show me what the new fry would do. I noticed that the shrimp like to go to the back of the tank. By doing this, some got sucked up or caught on the filter intake. This may be what is happening to my new fry.

That's the reason I want to added the nylon over the filter, but I'm not sure how. Do I just cut a piece of nylon stocking (the kind ladies wear) and tie it around the intake tube? I have 2 AC110's (replaced the emperor 400) turned to max. Should I set the filter to it's minimum setting?
 
Nylon stocking material works OK though you will have to clean it often. I use a rubber band to attach it. It starts clogging quickly.

You can also get a block of foam ( like prefilter sponge ) and cut a hole in it to fit over the filter intake. This won't clog up as quickly and you will be adding a powered sponge filter to your system.
 
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