Well actually I am doing neither. I don't like to regurgitate what I have read. There is a vast difference between telling all you know and knowing all you tell. I rely mainly on experience but if that is unacceptable then I will not offer advice.
In my personal experience, Mollies will get the shimmies if there is no salt in the water, they are also extremely prone to parasites and infections, after raising the specific gravity of the water with a little instant ocean, all health problems dissipated, i too kept mine at room temperature, with water temperature in the 70-76*F range, I disagree on the statement about mollies being intolerant of cold temperatures, there are some streams nearby here that have wild mollies, and we go down to the 30's in the winter time.
Try raising the salinity of their tank, I think that you will be happy with the results.
Well actually I am doing neither. I don't like to regurgitate what I have read. There is a vast difference between telling all you know and knowing all you tell. I rely mainly on experience but if that is unacceptable then I will not offer advice.
Huh? No one said experience wasn't acceptable.
You're saying in your experience Mollys do best in warm water and a lower pH.
I'm not questioning your own experience with that, although I'm surprised as Molly's typically rquire the opposite. They've been tank bred for so long though that I don't doubt they could get used to anything. It's a moot point anyway if the OP doesn't make it back
I think Excuzzeme didn't say Mollies don't need hard water or even that they don't like a
higher range of ph... just not excessively high ph.
Although water with higher ph is usually hard, you can have soft water with a high ph if the water
has sodium bicarbonate in it. She could have Mollies in water that's too soft for them, yet in ph that is
higher than is the comfortable range for them.
And, too cold is a relative term... and the tolerance of colder temperatures may vary with Mollies from different sources so trying to warm it up a bit to see if the shimmies stop couldn't hurt.
I think we just have a communication problem, that's all.....
What works for local populations of (probably) P. sphenops doesn't necessarily work for aquarium strains of P. sphenops X P. latipinna bred for colour and finnage rather than hardiness. Most people's experience of domestic mollies is that they need warm water high in TDS. Since they can be adapted readily to marine conditions with a pH of around 8.4 I don't think high pHs bother them. Indeed, pH generally doesn't bother fish much at all; GH and KH are far more important.
Karl hit the nail on the head. The term "Molly" comprises species native to North Carolina, and species native to tropical Central America. Some of these species and even certain populations of these species live in FW, brackish/tidal situations, fully marine and even euryhaline environments. Add to this diversity the facts that these species are ready, willing and able to create fertile hybrids, and that we humans have encouraged these hybridizations and we are left with a situation where generalizations are pretty hard to make.
