Mollies

[fishwatcher]

Do all of you use salt in the tank with your mollies? If so, are there other fish in there too? If not, do the mollies do ok? I'd love to have some, but I've heard conflicting information on the salt issue.
Thanks!

 

[Annastasia]

You essentially always want to use salt whenever possible. Sure, you'll have some people come on and state they've been doing fine for years, but mostly, you need salt. They've probably been lucky. The only times when you can sometimes squeak by is if you have very hard and alkaline water.

I keep salt with my Mollies, yes. I have Guppies and Platies with them, and they have no toruble tolerating the slightly brackish water.

 

[nmonks]

Let me second that. Mollies do so much better with salt than without. Fungus and fin-rot as good as never occur, and "the shimmies" simply isn't a problem.

At a low salt concentration, you can actually keep a wide range of fish. Most livebearers will do fine, as Annastasia says, but so too will spiny eels, glassfish, kribensis, ropefish, gobies, rainbowfish, and even some of the more common killifish, like Asian panchax and Florida flagish. What you can't keep in salted water are (with a few exceptions) tetras, carps, loaches, gouramis, and catfish. Cichlids, for the most part, are indifferent to low salt concentrations, but soft water species like angels and rams probably shouldn't be exposed to salty water for long.

You only need a little salt to make a big difference, even an an SG as low as 1.003 will do the trick (that's about 2-3 grammes per litre).

Cheers,

Neale

 

[fishwatcher]

Thanks for the replies, guys. I've tried to keep them a long, long time ago only to have them die from problem after problem. The salt issue is probably what was wrong, as I had not been told by any lfs to add it.
I'll know now, though, thanks to this here mighty fine forum.
Thanks, again!

BTW, nmonks, what is that in your avatar I've been trying to figure this out for a while now.

 

[nmonks]

BTW, nmonks, what is that in your avatar I've been trying to figure this out for a while now.

It's Kosh, a Vorlon. He's a myserious, contradictory character from a brilliant TV show called Babylon 5. He has to wear that costume so you won't recognise him. Underneath that outfit he's a... well, that would spoil the surprise.

Vorlons consider themselves infallible voices of authority. They are, of course, wrong.

Cheers,

Neale