Adding mollies to F8 tank?

[bazil323]

Right now I have a 44 gallon tank made for the corner. I have an Emperor 280 filter, a bubble curtain with air pump for 20-60 gallon tanks, a Jager 125w heater. Lots of decor. SG 1.005-1.006.

I have one F8 puffer and 8 bumblebee gobies in there, and they are all getting along fantastically. The F8 completely ignores the bbgs (which doesn't necessarily mean he'll not attack them later). I was wondering if I could add some mollies, and how many. I know some have kept mollies and F8s together with no problems, and some have had problems. What I'm really wondering is if that will overload the tank. By my figuring, I could have 5 mollies (just regular ones, definitely not sailfins). Does that compute?

I'm also hoping to get some decor like this: http://www.petco.com/product/10920/Aqua ... ction.aspx and this: http://www.petco.com/product/10543/Aqua ... ction.aspx. I'm thinking kind of like an Atlantis theme. Maybe with a sunken ship.

[Pufferpunk]

I have molies in mine. The F8s eat most of the fry but some do make it (definately survival of the fittest in that tank). I did try Sailfin mollies once & they were picking on the puffers.

[bazil323]

Yeah, I'd heard sailfin mollies would pick on puffers. I just want regular mollies for some color and interest. The puffer "disappears" in the tank 'cause it's so big and he's only a little less than 1.5" and the bbgs are so small that they're hard to see sometimes. Plus, they like to stay near the bottom and outside of the tank rather than the middle.

[coldmachineUK]

I had a pair of black mollies with my F8s some time ago: they were fairly boisterous I have to admit, and I did end up moving them out in the end. It's possible, but expect your puffers to be harassed especially at feeding times.

If you're looking for tankmates I can recommend knight gobies and desert gobies. I have three of each with my two F8s and they've been cohabiting since March this year without any problems whatsoever. Actually, one of the desert gobies and one of the F8s are best friends

[blondenblue]

I had 2 standard mollies in with my 2 f8's and the mollies killed one of my F8's, the mollies then went to live with puffin (barbatus) but unfortunatley he didn't like them so they didn't keep him company for long!

[bazil323]

Yeah, I'm looking for tank mates. I want something that will be very visible in the tank. I also want something that isn't black or lime green/yellow. My F8 and bbgs are very similar in coloring, so I want something that will contrast with that. Like orange, red, bright yellow, or blue.

My F8 can get lost in the tank because there is so much for him to hide in. Also the bbgs are so small that they can be hard to see.

I was thinking mollies because I know they can survive in brackish conditions, but I am open to other suggestions. I'm not in love with mollies by any means! My SG is 1.005 to 1.006 and temp is 79-80 F, so it would have to survive in those conditions.

[coldmachineUK]

Well, you could try orange or green chromide cichlids? They're very placid and will get along fine with your F8 and BBGs, and they're also fairly easy to come by. A pair of orange would look nice. They're brackish too, of course.

[bazil323]

I went ahead and got regular mollies. My lfs has a limited selection, and I couldn't find chromides of either color. So I got 5 mollies, 3 are orange spackled with silvery-gold scales, 1 is orange, black, and silvery-gold spackled, and 1 is dalmation. 4 are nearly 2 inches and the 5th is about 1.5 inches. They're roughly the same size as my F8, but the F8 is chubbier, lol.

So far Grün hasn't attacked them and they haven't attacked him. He does try to investigate them, but he doesn't like to get too near them. They kinda chased him a little (gave up after a second or two), but it seemed more like they were curious about him. They haven't bothered the bbgs at all. I'm keeping a pretty close eye on them though. They completely cleaned up the brown algae in the back corner of the tank, lol! The back corner is near a window, so it's usually covered with algae by the next weekly water change.

I drip aclimated them to the brackish conditions. That took up a couple hours. Then I took out a cup or so out of the bucket and replaced it with tank water every 15 minutes for an hour. Then I grabbed a ziploc bag and filled it halfway with tank water. I scooped out the mollies and put them in the ziploc. I floated the bag for about 20 minutes to equalize the temp. Then I let them loose.

I'm gonna do a water change tomorrow and completely rearrange the decor. Plus I'm going to add a couple flat rocks leaning together to make a largish cave. I got them on vacation a couple weeks ago. I tested them with vinegar, no bubbling. I meant to do it last week, but I didn't feel like rearranging to make enough room then.

[coldmachineUK]

Sounds a great plan Your puffer is one of the lucky ones to have an owner who knows what they're doing!
Let everyone know how they get on.

[bazil323]

Why thank you! I try.

The bad news is that my Dalmatian molly died Saturday morning (or Friday night), but I will be able to exchange him. Also, after more research, I figured out that one of the silver and orange mollies is a male and the other orange ones are female. Also, they were pregnant. The orange and black one (named her Favrielle) gave birth this weekend. This morning there were 6 fry. I made a hideout for them out of thread and a stick . I'm gonna see if I can get a baby hideout floating plant as long as I'm exchanging the dead fish.

The other females are Phedre and Sidonie. The male is Joscelin. The Dalmation was Imriel, but if I can get a female Dalmation I'm gonna name her Alais. Anyone know where those names came from?

Phedre appears to be pregnant as well, as she is as big as Favrielle was. No Favrielle is quite skinny. Sidonie is a bit smaller than the others, so it's hard to compare.

The decor rearranging went really well, though with all the stirring up of the substrate from cleaning and then rearranging all my plants and other decor, the water got really white. My crushed coral is terrible. I rinsed it forever, and it would always get really cloudy after water changes. Then I moved it to the larger 44 gallon, and rinsed it really well in small batches at that time. I still gets cloudy!! Although, I did add aragonite sand to the 44g, and I did not rinse it as it was "live." I think that was BS, but I figured it couldn't hurt. But anyway, I moved the zebra and slate rocks over to where Grün usually sleeps so he has a cave if he wants. I moved the plants more towards the middle even though they are more background height. I figured it would be better to block the view than risk having too much room to chase each other. I did add the larger rocks from my vacation as a cave. It looks really nice, and the fish are doing really well.

[bazil323]

Oh yeah, and one of the bbgs ate a fry right in front of my eyes! It was kinda cool, but I felt bad and called him a hamster, lol.

[bazil323]

Yesterday morning there were 6 fry left. Last night and this morning I could only see 3. When I get paid Thursday, I'm planning on getting a Baby Hide-Out. It's just a floating fake plant that's about 4" by 7". I don't really want to futz with a net breeder or anything.

[apachepufferman]

I don't know how many mollies you want but I would recomend seeing how many fry survive on there own this first birth. Your molly will be prego again in about three days!! Mine had 40 fry drop on the second pregnancy and only 8 or nine have survived (6 suvived on the first one) . My second female is still pregnant and ready to pop so if you don't want a million mollies you may wanna just play this one out and see what nature does. After that you can see how much money and time you wanna put into protecting your molly fry. In 6 months you could have 100 mollies; they're almost as bad as guppies. I keep them and use the fry as feeders for my arrowhead so for me it works out ok but I have a special curcumstance.

[bazil323]

Only 3 from the first birth were alive yesterday morning, and then last night one of the others gave birth. I have a small mini tank. I think it's supposed to be for bettas or crickets, and it's about a quart and a half capacity. I pulled out 9 or 10 fry. I'm gonna see if I can grow those out and give them to my mom. She has a tank that hasn't been set up yet, so I'm thinking I'll pick it up today and set it up. I'll use the filter media from my tetra/shrimp/snail tank to cycle it and put the babies in there. Then once they're bigger, I'll bring the tank back. She's pretty busy, and just had a cardiac catheterization done yesterday. So she isn't supposed to lift anything over 10 pounds for the next few days.

I'm not going to put much time/energy/money into keeping them as I just don't have the room to raise them. My bbgs seemed to enjoy stalking and eating the fry, and the mollies tried to chase them but didn't seem to catch any.

[coldmachineUK]

A lot of live bearers are notorious for breeding so excessively but your puffer will likely pick off what it can, as will the BBGs. I'm not a fan, necessarily, of live food especially if it's not part of the natural diet of a fish, for the record. But, it's what will happen that's all.
You could try to sell fry to any LFS you have in the area: sometimes they'll take them for a few pennies or in exchange for a plant or two or something.