Are acclimated FW mollies still bad?

[jasonrusso]

So, I know it is not good to feed Rosie Reds and goldfish to lions/anglers. How about mollies? If they are acclimated to salt and gut loaded with pellet food, are they still bad?

They can't harbor any saltwater parasites and you can treat their tank with prazi-pro or General Cure if desired.

 

[lion king]

I keep a separate feeder tank where they get fed high quality marine pellets, you can even see the pellets inside the ghosties before being fed to my angler/lions. I also enrich the feeder tank with Brightwell vitamin-M, and soak them in a container with a few drops of Brightwell aminomega for 20 min or so before feeding. Whether it works or not I don't know, but I have had better success than anyone else I know that have kept them on a dead diet.

 

[jasonrusso]

I keep a separate feeder tank where they get fed high quality marine pellets, you can even see the pellets inside the ghosties before being fed to my angler/lions. I also enrich the feeder tank with Brightwell vitamin-M, and soak them in a container with a few drops of Brightwell aminomega for 20 min or so before feeding. Whether it works or not I don't know, but I have had better success than anyone else I know that have kept them on a dead diet.

This is all FW correct?

I feed everything the New Life Spectrum pellets which are supposedly the best. They gobbled them right down

 

[lion king]

This is all FW correct?

I feed everything the New Life Spectrum pellets which are supposedly the best. They gobbled them right down

I keep my ghosties and mollies in a 10g fw tank now. I have in the past bred the mollies myself in salt water. I have in the past also kept the mollies in a separate tank and treated them with prazi pro, if you are overly concerned. I have tracked and researched for many years ambush predator type fish like this, and have definitively concluded that at a very high % they do not do well long term on an exclusive dead diet. Their personality and activity are also greatly enhanced by a live diet as well. Most people do not want the investment of cost and time to maintain a live diet for these guys, so you will get alot of people advocating training to a dead diet.

Unless a marine biologist cuts one of these guys open that have had a comparable lifespan in captivity with another that has been fed a varied dead diet and compared; you will never know for sure. Hobbyist online repeat of alot of folklore and theory. Anglers can also lose their equilibrium from being overfed. The gases build up inside, I doubt it has to do with mollies or ghosties.

 

[brandon429]

there are specific online articles that remark upon types of calcium being different between the feed sources ranging fresh to sw, and that fatty liver disease is the impact of feeding across boundaries. for initial search id go with "toonen, feeding freshwater fish to marine fish" which is only a general search but w lead to one good article on the matter. its not that we can't live on a diet of solid cheeseburgers, its that we should live on a solid diet of only chick fil a. that's the best analogy I could draw without searching.

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2003/12/inverts

 

[jasonrusso]

I'm not advocating either way. I like watching my lionfish hunt down prey, and if it keeps him happy and active I'm all for it.

How much work is it maintaining a 10g FW tank, really? That's the least of my worries. I just don't want to"poison" the fish by feeding them the wrong food. I don't think that feeding them a Molly that came from brackish water every once in a while is a bad thing. Especially if it is gut loaded with quality pellets. If I can get them to breed even better because I know that the food is disease and parasite free.

You have got the mollies to breed in a tank?

 

[lion king]

Breeding mollies is pretty easy, do a quick search you'll get all the info you need. Breeding in fw is easier than breeding in sw, but there you go another argument about fw vs sw. I have a couple of lfs here that do a big fw business and their customers are always bringing in babies. I found that worked better for me.