View Full Version : Anyone has experience keeping marine molly
arash53
08-20-2011, 06:42 PM
I just saw J&L has bunch of black molly which fully acclimated to salt water, I wonder if anyone has experience keeping them. They are so cute.
dsaundry
08-20-2011, 07:20 PM
Mollies are one of the few if only traditional fw tank fish that will do ok in sw set-ups. You just have to be patient when converting them over.... heres a link to a video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_ULIqil5xY&feature=related
dsaundry
08-20-2011, 07:21 PM
And apparently they eat algae...wooohoooo!:biggrin:
arash53
08-20-2011, 07:22 PM
These are already converted, I wonder if they are reef safe or not!
These are already converted, I wonder if they are reef safe or not!
Ya, they are. They are great algae eaters. :)
FishyFishy!
08-20-2011, 07:29 PM
There is actually quite a few different species that naturally start their lives in total freshwater and migrate their way down to saltwater as they get older. I know green spotted puffers, figure 8 puffers, pea puffers, archer fish, and mono sebae's have been known to be totally ok in a full saltwater environment as long as they are slowely acclimated.
arash53
08-20-2011, 07:33 PM
OK then I gonna go get a pair today :biggrin:
Reef Puffer
08-20-2011, 08:27 PM
i have a couple, bought 2 females (fw). theres a little story behind them. i started my sw tank got it all cycled and couldnt get to a lfs that sold sw suplies. anyway was so boring in my cycled tank with nothing in it but live rock. i bought some more live rock and another tank of a local guy who had given up on sw keeping. he told me to go to the pet store and buy mollies. (these are fresh water mollies) he said just throw them in, he says if their prego the babies will just pop right out! i asked about climating them and he assured me i could just throw them in. me beeing super newbie to salt water i did it... ok was prolly a little mean and maybe like cycling with live fish, but i didnt know any better. anyways they both had babies, they both are fine to date (3 months later) and i have a dozen baby marine mollies swimming around that seem to b fine aswell. is an orange molly and a dalmation molly. but thats just my 2 cents on mollies in the marine environment. they do eat algae all day, aswell as wicked little sand sifters. hardy as hell and dont pick on anything, hella poopers tho! not the prettiest fish but definataly great starter fish.
arash53
08-20-2011, 08:41 PM
So if I just go and buy pretty FW Salfin molly and throw them in the tank it will it make it?
Reef Puffer
08-20-2011, 09:01 PM
idk anything about mollies other than the ones i threw in are just fine (im NOT saying just throw freshwater fish in a marine environment). the orange one lightened up quite a bit and i heard there are different molly speicies that do better than others. the black ones apparently do the best. ive seen marine dalmation mollies for sale. and like i said before, i have a dozen little babies that all look fine. the first batch (dalmation) is prolly 2 1/2 moths old.
So if I just go and buy pretty FW Salfin molly and throw them in the tank it will it make it?
arash53
08-20-2011, 09:06 PM
I'll give it a try today and will post the result, I will acclimate them in bout 2 hours slowly by adding my tank SW to the LFS FW.
arash53
08-21-2011, 01:11 AM
OK I bought a pair of Salfin Balloon Molly and put them in the tank. it's about two hours and they are doing fine
http://i735.photobucket.com/albums/ww353/arash53/cf6d935a.jpg
rastaangel
08-21-2011, 01:17 AM
I used mollys to cycle my tank the first time around. I went to the pet store and bought 30 random mollys and just dumped them into my tank. They lived threw the cycle and multiplied rapidly, after 2 months there were gobs of baby mollies all over!!! Then I introduced my pair of volitans and they cleared them out for the most part. To this day, I have had my tank break, started over, then had it crash from being poisoned, started over again, and what has lived threw all it? 3 sailfin mollies...
SeaHorse_Fanatic
08-21-2011, 08:59 AM
I used to very slowly (over several weeks) acclimate balloon mollies from fw to brackish to full strength saltwater years ago. It can be done.
goby1
08-21-2011, 01:56 PM
Paul's in Surrey has a salt water Molly tank that's pretty cool. I bought a male and a female - the male died right away but the female is great - eats algae all day and is no trouble. Definately odd to see an orange molly swimming sided by side by a spotted puffer though ...
arash53
08-21-2011, 02:53 PM
It about 15 hours, they are alive and doing fine but they did not get use to water flow yet still staying near the surface!
FitoPharmer
08-21-2011, 05:21 PM
If they stay near the surface all the time, they could be having problems acclimating.
Reef Puffer
08-21-2011, 05:37 PM
It about 15 hours, they are alive and doing fine but they did not get use to water flow yet still staying near the surface!
mine would play in the current, they looked like they were having alot of fun (for the first week). my mollies also spend alot of time at the surface, they do there runs of the tank and pick at the glass most of the day but there "home" seems to be at the top in a low current spot (always the first to the food). 3 months in.
When I first set my salt water tank, our local fish store sold me mollies to help with the cycle.
As my tank already was at 1.025 salinity, I asked about this being hard on them and was told to just float the bag as usual and slowly add some salt water. After a few hours they were added to the tank with no ill results. Could not have been to hard on them as I had a number the females give birth in the first month.
We started with six mollies and after the tank cycled, I took about 40 back to the per store.
arash53
08-22-2011, 04:38 AM
They start swimming all over the tank.
one question when they breed will my fish eat their babies? I have a pair of clown, a bengali cardinal , a firefish , a diamond goby and a coral beauty angel.
I am sure that most of your fish would eat the babies. When I had mine, the mollies were all that were in the tank and most of them seemed to find enough hiding spots in the rocks and made it, but some did get eaten as well.
At the time I was also running a canistar filter and many "lived" in there until I cleaned it.
Reef Puffer
08-22-2011, 04:29 PM
i found that 90% went into the overflow (made it easy to get them out) and the other 10% snack food!
Arash. can you update please... Mollies still ok and eating algae?
arash53
09-07-2011, 04:24 PM
The male had hear attached when my MH light turned on! it was doing great as when the MH trued on it died right away!
I gave the female to someone because she could not adjust herself with my water flow, if you have hight flow dont get ballon molly .
clowningaround
09-07-2011, 09:03 PM
I had a couple of Molly's given to me awhile ago and they are great in a reef tank..I have balloon mollys and no problem. They are algea grazers as well.:biggrin: Molly's adapt very well into marine aquariums,just convert slowly if they exist in a fresh water system.
They are great for a cycling fish as well..They reproduce very well,so a little live food for the rest of our fish can be a little treat.(unfortunatly for the ones that can't hide good enough.:cry:
A few Molly's are great,although a whole tank full of them might be alittle much.
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