Mollies!

[soggydrysuit]

I had six Sphenops mollies in with the scats to ack as dither fish. They produce quite a few young! Here's a pic of my mollie fry tank before I need to thin them out into other tanks. About 100 fry were born in sequence from various mums after a 50% water change.

They are 'only mollies' but I find them very personable

And it's nice to see them shoal. It's not very often I've had shoals of literally dozens of fish...

baby mollies.jpg

Note box filter, internal power filter and 'hidden' powerhead driven box filter - ther's an air powered sponge in there also. Loads of mature ceramic media and alphagrog. This many fish it needs it!

[BeachORama]

Nice!!!

[xrayjeeper83]

thats cool, i didnt know mollies would shoal

[soggydrysuit]

Thank for the replies, I have never tried to take video (of fish or anything else for that matter) but maybe I should (fish)?

I suppose fry just do shoal, to avoid predation. The largest is 1cm long, from a previous batch. There are about ten of those. Most of the rest are less than 5mm but it all adds up. Hormones if not water chemistry, I'm going to have to split them up.

Any body near here want some?!

These are sphenops mollies and I got about a hundred fry from four females over a few days when I did a larger than normal water change. Sort of did that on purpose to trigger them before I went on holiday.

Ah, well. I can go to 4x the water volume they are in now but need to start finding homes...

[soggydrysuit]

Hi, I did upgrade the baby mollies to a 240l tank:

black mollie.jpg

mollie tank 240l.jpg

mollie 240l 2.jpg

The filter you cannot see is under the plastic plants.

Just honey sand for a base but the tank is at 1.004 in salinity...

I spend my mornings looking into this tank - mollies are quite personable

[soggydrysuit]

Btw: I'm up to 15 tanks, a vat and a pond.

Nuts!

[J-P]

Btw: I'm up to 15 tanks, a vat and a pond.

Nuts!

How many did you start with when you joined the forum back in 08?

[soggydrysuit]

Hi J-P,

It was already about ten even then. I just appear to like fish that either need totally different water conditions or don't get along. It's always been that way with me: the more diverse the better

The outdoor coldwater pond was part of the house when we bought it, but I'd already dug a first liner job down south after I'd lost my parents. It's still there, at least five years after I moved to the other end of England.

I had three tanks totalling 200l or about 40g growing up. Kept at least on in my room at uni. Somehere between four and eight tanks up until maybe six years ago. Then ten or so.

Fishkeeping is a progressive disease

I do respect RTR et al for their efforts to try to get us to keep understocked species tanks. It works. All of my most successful ones have been just that...



Hope that answers some...

[J-P]

Ohhh very controlled

When I started TPF I had 1 tank... then got another for the puffers. Puffers need food so I got a snail breeder set up. Currently at 14 tanks in just under a year

I think 50% are necessary and the other half are "just because"

[soggydrysuit]

I think I'm approaching saturation in terms of the number of tanks I can look after myself. Unless I think about other ways of doing water changes. Sort of several bins for aging water of different composition and a pump dedicated to water changes.

I mostly syphon and refill by hose for the trops. The brackish get barrel fulls made up on the spot at the moment and only the marines get 24hr aging of their new water.

I'm also running out of places to put tanks!