Bad impulse buy at lfs, now upgrading, couple q

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blacksand

Registered Member
Dec 24, 2008
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Hi all, first post here...
About two, maybe 3 months ago my roomate and I made a very bad decision and made an impulse buy at a pet store. After some research we realized we had a 30gal tank with a bad combination of fish and a very crowded fishtank. Currently in this 30 gal tank there are-

3 bala sharks:eek:, 2 rainbow sharks, a pleco, a violet goby, a dwarf gourami, 4 black mollies and countless baby mollies that have spawned(aprox 20)

I am building a 150gal tank now to move the bala and some others into(60X24,as large as i can go atm). I finished the stand yesterday and am waiting on sweetwater epoxy to arrive to continue work on the tank.

Since the goby is brackish we want to keep him in the 30 and change that into a brackish tank. Also the mollies confuse me, I see them listed as brackish fish but they seem to be thriving in the tank as is. What should I do with them and any suggestions on population control for them?

So basicly the plan is mollies and goby in the 30 the others in the 150
Does this sound right?
 
I have mollies in my saltwater tank right now..just S L O W L Y! drip line them into brakish.
 
Some think that mollies do better with salt, some disagree. Using salt could be risky if not used properly ad so many would not advise it. Salt makes their immune system stronger apparently.
How you are going to stock the tanks sounds all right. As for population control, they will eat most if not all of thier young themselves.
 
My Mollies will eat their young ;). I have 3 Dalmation Mollies, the 2 females I had in freshwater, then they had babies and both of them got really thin and lethargic. I have a 40g Brackish tank also so switched them over to the brackish tank and both completely rebounded and both have had babies since and have never lost the weight like they did in freshwater. So I prefer them in brackish but have seen plenty of people successfully keep them in fresh too, I guess it just depends on the Molly.

I think your plan sounds right! I would keep the Mollies and DG in smaller tank and then transfer all the others to the bigger tank when cycled. Can't wait to see pics of the new tank!
 
Mollies are amazing. They can be kept from fresh to full salt.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailfin_molly

The link is for sailfin mollies, but should apply to most others.

Some people keep them in saltwater predator tanks as a breeding population, to provide food for various fish.
 
kidbookrev said:
Mollies are amazing. They can be kept from fresh to full salt.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailfin_molly

The link is for sailfin mollies, but should apply to most others.

Some people keep them in saltwater predator tanks as a breeding population, to provide food for various fish.
Click to expand...

Full saltwater will kill Mollies, even through acclimation it is a long tedious process.They can go from freshwater to a bit brackish, though I have bred mollies in Freshwater alone and adding salt is not needed.
 
There are over 20 different fish in the wild that have a common name of molly. There are 3 different ones that we see in the aquarium trade that have been bred with each other to get what we have today. They are the shenops, the vellifera and the latipinna. It is not at all surprising that we find very different experiences with keeping mollies in salt, fresh or brackish. All of the mollies come from a different location than each other and they need somewhat differing water conditions. Some do come from waters that are somewhat brackish, some come from completely fresh water and others come from water that is almost salt water. The more common ones in most of our tanks can be acclimated to brackish conditions but it is not necessarily a good idea. Who really knows what we are dealing with in a domestic molly after all. It is safe to leave all mollies that we usually see in straight freshwater but some will admittedly do a little better in brackish while others will just survive in brackish and won't flourish.
 
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