Freshwater Mollies

[Rmckoy]

I'm interested in adding some mollies to a 30 gal frag tank. It has a lot of macro and some cotton candy, live rock, a few peppermint shrimp, and some frags. The peppermints are reproducing. I've seen at least one baby shrimp in there. Assuming the mollies would love to snack on those!

I believe mollies are herbivores
They can consume a lot of algae

 

[Koh23]

Yes, mine graze rock and sand all day long....

 

[Siberwulf]

Wish me luck, going to pop one of them into the DT today. Did 20 mins of temp acclimation and then a 50% water salinity acclimation.

 

[reef4life!!!]

I have 2 mollys and a baby that survived so far and they are pigs..they eat anything i feed,they even compete for the food(at least the female does,the male is more docile).Acclimation is really random,i acclimated for 4 hours like 8 mollys in a period of 6 months and only 2 survived the month..So far i haven't seen my female to give birth even though the male is doing the actions neccesery...they don't have problem with some medium high flow,they can always chill in the low current anyways..Good luck!

 

[Koty]

I had a female who gave birth to about 15 during the cycle period. all ended as Elegance coral food.

 

[Siberwulf]

Wish me luck, going to pop one of them into the DT today. Did 20 mins of temp acclimation and then a 50% water salinity acclimation.

Things looked good when I went to bed. She was swimming around, hiding in places, sticking to the lower-flow areas of the tank. Woke up this morning and she was stuck to the side of the overflow. RIP Corndog...now to tell the daughter...

 

[shwareefer]

This guy lasted about a year and half in my frag tank. They say they only eat algae but I think he ate some copepods too. Maybe what killed him, lol.

 

[Midrats]

So do they mow down hair and turf algae? Bubble?

 

[shwareefer]

I only had the one in a lowboy. He just went around nibbling but no where near as effective as a snail. He just wanted spirulina lol. Maybe if I starved him he would have done more but I can't do that.

 

[Sharkbait19]

I don’t have any in my reef, though I’ve thought about it. I do have them in my freshwater tank.
They love algae, but are not strictly herbivores. They eat insects and small crustaceans naturally. The way mine go to town on mysis, you’d think the puffers are the vegetarians…
They do wonders for algae though:

 

[Duncan62]

So my daughter's pair of female mollies had some babies. Much to our surprise (I think they were carrying when we got them from Petco) we found 5 of them swimming in the corner. They've since tripled in size.

Now, I've read that you can put them in either Salt or Fresh water (since they are naturally found in brackish water), but I had some questions!

• Has anyone here done this and are there any gotchas with it?
• Do they play nice with other saltwater things? (snails, crabs, coral, other fish)
• Do I need to QT them, as they've been captive bred? (unintentionally...)

Thanks in advance!

Yes. Acclimate slowly. They will peck at algea.