Mollies And Salt

[amf17]

I read the pinned topic "Mollies Need Salt"

Is there any differing opinions that anyone can share?

I've heard of people keeping them in unsalted water... but that is rare... i think???

It says in the pinned topic that they do well with 3-5grammes per litre which is about a tablespoon per gallon.

Just wondering if anybody uses different amounts of salt, more or less than stated in the pinned topic... and whether they've had different success with differing amounts of salt.

I've had a very tough time keeping mollies healthy in my main tank... no matter how hard i try to keep very stable, clean water. My platy's and tetras seem to be doing well but the mollies always seem to have a rough time in my water... ph 8.0, 80deg, no salt, amm 0, nitrite 0, nitrate 5ppm

I have my mollies currently in a 10 gallon quarantine with 0.25 tblspn salt per gallon. I'll see how they do with that.

Any thoughts or opinions???

 

[Lindsey88]

I have heard black mollies are hard to keep without salt but other types are ok. I have a balloon molly and there is no salt in my tank and i've had her for about 2 1/2 months she is very healthy.

 

[5teady_2012]

I have always kept my mollies without salt and they tend to get ill easier, then i started using salt when i was doing water changes and they been a lot better since... so i recomend a bit of salt in with them, as long as you have no other fish that salt will bother...

 

[dunchp]

I have always kept my mollies without salt and they tend to get ill easier, then i started using salt when i was doing water changes and they been a lot better since... so i recomend a bit of salt in with them, as long as you have no other fish that salt will bother...

Ha. A great big can of worms. I would really love to get involved in this but I will just refer you to the attached article.

As far as I am concerned, Derek Lambert was 'the man' in livebearer keeping. He died a few years ago, but if he hadn't then the livebearer hobby would be a very different place today. I agree with Derek.

Certainly, I have collected mollies from Guatemala and Mexico and have found them in saltwater arroyos around Cuidad del Carmen, brackish Lagoons in Salpeten, Flores and freshwater rios throughout; generally wherever there is a stretch of water, there is likely to be one type of molly or another.

Read the attached

http/www.afae.it/pages/tematica/articoli...salt_debate.htm

The thing to remember is that if it works for you, then it works. Try putting salt in the aquaria if you wish. Just as I am not putting salt in and doing fine.

Regards,

Duncan.

 

[Colin_T]

I found they do fine if they have some general hardness in the water. I have kept them in salt, fresh and brackish and it doesn't seem to make much diff as long as they have some mineral content in the water. I found the biggest problem with mollies was intestinal worms and gill flukes. They look nice and fat but waste away. When you treat them for worms they suddenly go skinny and then start to do really well. If you get local bred stuff they do better than the asian imports.

 

[nmonks]

As people have said, it's possible to keep mollies without salt.

However, let me put it this way: for various magazines and web sites I answer queries about sick fish (at least ten a day for Wet Web Media alone). Of those, a fair proportion are about sick mollies. Almost all the instances with sick mollies have the aquarist keeping them in freshwater. I've yet to get a message about mollies with fungus in brackish or salt water. While I have received questions about mollies sick with finrot in brackish water, such messages are rare and usually related to very poor water quality or physical damage (e.g., biting by pufferfish).

In other words, if you want a close to 100% chance of keeping your mollies healthy for a long time, keep them in brackish. Even a 10% normal marine salinity (around SG 1.003) does the trick nicely when marine salt mix is used. You can keep any other livebearers in such a tank without problems as well as a whole range of freshwater fish.

But if you can settle for a 50% chance of keeping your mollies healthy, but a 50% chance of having to deal with finrot or fungus, they go ahead and put them in freshwater.

The salt question actually seems less to do with where mollies come from in the wild, so my opinion on that has changed over the years. It seems more probable that the sodium chloride mitigates against nitrate poisoning and the carbonate hardness prevents pH changes, both things mollies seem peculiarly sensitive to.

The addition of marine salt mix is such a no-brainer to me I have no idea why people object to it. Mollies need a hard water aquarium anyway, so why not add some salt? All the other livebearers will thrive in such conditions.

Cheers, Neale

Is there any differing opinions that anyone can share?

 

[kpintheshed]

i've had mollys in freshwater with out salt, but make sure you keep the water changes up. its properly worth using salt; if you can be bothered

 

[scooterchick]

I've been keeping mollies around a year now and they're def my favourite tropical fish, so much so after about 6 months I set up a brackish tank specially for the mollies. The first 6 months I kept them they would die on me, some within a couple of weeks, one even in days, of bringing them home from LFS. Once I put them in their own tank with marine salt they started doing much better and I have 4 lots of fry at different ages. It's really not a bother either. When you do water changes you add a teaspoon of salt per gallon you're ptting in the tank, you're adding stress coat anyway, so a bit of salt isn't a hardship and your mollies will be much happier for it!