Platies, Mollies, Or Guppies?

[corpse fish]

Ok well today I plan to go to the store and get 1 male and 2 females in order to breed a few batches. Im giving the 3 a 10 gallon and putting the fry in the 20 gallon. I'm not sure though if i should get guppies mollies or platies. Any advice?

 

[Suz]

Ive bought some guppies a while back and had 2 lots of batches from them.
They have their fry about every 4 weeks and can have loads! from one batch i managed to save about 12!
When the guppy has her fry be sure to be standing by with a net to move them away as she will eat them! I set up a breeding net for the fry to live in.
Feeding wise people say different things but mine were ok eating very cruntched up flakes.
Good luck!

 

[corpse fish]

Thanks on the info Suz, specially since you were the first to post something about it. And If I wanted to would the fry be ok in a tank by themselves with an undergravel filter? I'd rather have them in a bigger space rather than a net or something else attatched to the tank.

 

[Suz]

I'm sure they would, thats currently what i'll be doing when my guppy has her next batch of fry - they'll be going into their own tank, the breeding nets are good for a little while but if they slip into the tank you run the risk of them getting eaten up by the larger fish so its defiantly safer to move them toally, and with your ungravel fliter there'll be no worry of them getting too close to a 'normal' fliter and getting sucked in!

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

10gals is too small for 3mollys so they are out of the question, a 10gal though would be fine for a trio of platys or guppys although i would personally have 3-4females instead of 2. Rememeber to cycle the tank carefully, preferably via a fishless cycle, otherwise you won't have many fry surviving.
Buy some dechlorinator, test kits for ammonia, nitrates and nitrites, extra plants for the tank so female fish have somwhere private and peaceful to go give birth out of sight of other fish and some fish food(flakes are fine but it would be good if you invest in some livebearer fry foods like liquifry or tetraminfry, also some high protein foods like frozen or freezedried daphinia, bloodworms and krill will be good for the adult fish and to help give the females energy ). Make sure your filter and heater are also adequate for the tank.
There are alot of pinned articles on this forum in the various sections on pretty much anything you need to know, so feel free to check them out .

 

[corpse fish]

Oh don't worry about all the supplies and test kits, iv'e had those for a while and iv'e been looking up fish infor for 3 weeks, and the tank has been going to about a week now, and i already have fish at my other house that have been doing fine too. I plan to get some plants, but I'm not sure which kind. Any recomendations on that?

 

[sylvia]

How long you've researched or had other fish isn't realy the point - are you fishless cycling? That's what matters. Read the links in my signature if you don't know about using pure ammonia or fishfood to cycle without fish in the tank (before you add anything).

I agree that you can't get mollies for the 10 gallon. I'd also probably go for platies instead of guppies because they are hardier - at least now that the tank is still new.

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

Just get some nice dense plants, alot of plants actually sold in lfs's are not tank plants- the easy way to tell is generally anything that has varigated leaves or can support itself upright on its own is not a tank plant, you want somthing that is dense and makes good hiding for fish. You also may want to consider getting some "flora boost" by interpet for the plants as it'll give them somthing to feed off and get rooted and healthy in the tank .

 

[corpse fish]

How long you've researched or had other fish isn't realy the point - are you fishless cycling? That's what matters. Read the links in my signature if you don't know about using pure ammonia or fishfood to cycle without fish in the tank (before you add anything).

I agree that you can't get mollies for the 10 gallon. I'd also probably go for platies instead of guppies because they are hardier - at least now that the tank is still new.

ok i get what you're saying and i read your articles, but im kind of confused. The article says to put some ammonia (which i dont know why) in the tank, and if i do what should i put in there? And also, it says you need air to help the healthy bacteria grow, would it matter if it was a regular ornament on one side of the tank or should i get an extra stone and put it on the other side of the tank?

 

[dwarfgourami]

[/quote]


ok i get what you're saying and i read your articles, but im kind of confused. The article says to put some ammonia (which i dont know why) in the tank, and if i do what should i put in there? And also, it says you need air to help the healthy bacteria grow, would it matter if it was a regular ornament on one side of the tank or should i get an extra stone and put it on the other side of the tank?
[/quote]

The rationale behind adding the ammonia is that you are reproducing the situation of when you first add fish to the tank- but without any fish to suffer this rather toxic sitaution.

Just to run through quickly:

When you add fish to a tank they produce ammonia (wee, poo, breath). Ammonia unfortunately is toxic to fish, that's why they sometimes die in a new tank. In time friendly bacteria (always present in the water) will grow, fed by this ammonia, to the extent where there is enough of them in the tank to deal with the ammonia. They turn it into nitrites, unfortunately also toxic to the fish. Given time, other friendly bacteria (naturally present in the water) will reproduce to the extent that they can take care of the nitrites and turn them into nitrates= a lot less harmful to the fish. At this stage the tank is said to be cycled- BINGO!

When I started keeping fish, it was thought that the only possible way of getting to this stage was to start keeping fish who could produce enough ammonia to get the bacteria growing. Of course this meant that some of your fish had to live through this toxic situation, in order to provide the ammonia to get the tank cycled so it wouldn't be toxic to fish. Sad but considered inevitable.

Then one day, somebody had a seriously bright idea: hey, if those starter fish are only there to add ammonia, why can't I add ammonia out of a bottle and grow my bacteria colony on that? The bottle won't mind and once the bacteria has grown, the tank will be safe for fish.

So they started experimenting and found it works just as well. You add drops of ammonia either every day or as the ammonia goes down in the tank (look for a thread called Two methods), the ammonia-eating bacteria grow, then the nitrite-eating bacteria, you monitor the process via a test kit, and will know exactly when the tank is safe for fish (dont forget to do a big water change right at the end of the cycle).

You can find ammonia (pure household ammonia, must contain nothing but ammonia and water) at hardware stores, not in lfs. You can plant the tank before or during the fishless cycle, the plants don't seem to mind.

 

[corpse fish]

Well I went to Petco the other day, and decided to get a male and female silver lyretail molly along with a black female molly (grown up in the same tank). Right now they are very happy and the two lyretails stick together pretty good. I plan to also bring my black molly into the tank since the black female seems lonely, and probably get another female to even things out a bit if my tank can handle it. When my females give birth, would it be ok if i just moved the males to the other tank and leave the fry with their mothers?

 

[Suz]

when the fry come along it'll be best to move just the fry to the other tank as the mother & other bigger fish will eat them