Saltwater Molly!?

[ech0o]

Yes, I heard about the possibility of adding molly as algae cleaning machines in reef tanks, so what is the first thing I do to try to save my hair algae infested tank, OFF TO THE FISH STORE!   Added a high finned white molly that what listed under the Sphenops species, and an orange creamsicle lyretail with a medium fin.   Heard many mixed reviews on acclimation, some say getting them to temperature and doing a quick drop right into the water, as long acclimation just adds stress time.   I couldn't bring myself to do an instant drop, so I drip acclimated them very slowly over 12 hours.   They seemed to be doing quite well, woke up the next morning, and the high finned white molly had passed in the night, I imagine from misacclimation.   Lyretail still going strong 5 days later, took him a day of being scared in the corner, now he is roaming the tank, unfortunately eating pods instead of algae, which I imagined from the Lyretail variation, was figuring the white one would be the bigger algae eater.
 
Anyways, may try to acclimate a couple more pretty soon, I would like a sailfin with some nice coloration for under the blue lights, although this guy looks pretty neat, I don't like the long fins in the saltwater environment.  Also I would like to note, not sure if it is because of the light, but since in the saltwater he seems to have started to slightly change coloration, with a little more texturing and such, I have heard other people mention this as well.
 

 
 

 

[ncguppy830]

nice , ive noticed that in SW the coloration seems to be better, not sure if its because of the saltinity or what.

 

[ech0o]

don't mind the horrific algae

 

[ncguppy830]

don't mind the horrific algae

meh i think it gives it a FW look

 

[neutron20]

I swear that for every 10 molly fish that I buy only 6 of them make it through all the travel and acclimation process.
It kind of brings the spirits down a bit...

 

[ech0o]

yea i wasn't to happy with the idea of keeping on trying and killing them, but then again it could have just been a fluke fish that wasn't as healthy as i thought

 

[DerpPH]

Well mollies can breed and thrive in pure seawater. Well its possible.

 

[guidedbyechoes]

It could just be the blue lighting making the colors look better. 

 

[ech0o]

It could just be the blue lighting making the colors look better. 

this also could very well be the case

 

[stanleo]

That is a beautiful fish. Is that a common color morph for the species?

 

[ech0o]

they call them creamsicle lyretails

 

[MBOU]

I vaguely remember trying out mollies to help cycle a marine tank about 5-6 years ago Well... technically my housemates tank but it was out TV lol and we got sick of staring at our 'pet rock' for ages and the water was testing fine but being rather skint and wanting to increase the levels of bacteria somewhat, we decided to use Mollies. Had three mollies, one black, one black lyretail and one 'chocolate' (solid milk chocolate brown) lyretail molly. All were acclimatised very slowly... in fact they were kept brackish for a little while first and then acclimatised to marine.
 
Ironically, a fish I really dislike and think is boring in tropical tanks looks awesome in a marine tank! Not that I would advise just anyone chucking mollies into saltwater..
 
It was a bit weird, we went for three females and they were all adults and clearly female... but after a few months in the tank one became particularly aggressive and started hounding the others, its fin underneath slowly became smaller and more elongated and its dorsal fin grew. It was essentially male! Obviously not fertile and despite hounding females constantly, they never produced babies. Was an interesting process that seemed to take 8-12 days from the initial change in personality to looking and behaving like a male.
 
Odd story lol.

 

[ncguppy830]

I vaguely remember trying out mollies to help cycle a marine tank about 5-6 years ago

Well... technically my housemates tank but it was out TV lol and we got sick of staring at our 'pet rock' for ages and the water was testing fine but being rather skint and wanting to increase the levels of bacteria somewhat, we decided to use Mollies. Had three mollies, one black, one black lyretail and one 'chocolate' (solid milk chocolate brown) lyretail molly. All were acclimatised very slowly... in fact they were kept brackish for a little while first and then acclimatised to marine.
 
Ironically, a fish I really dislike and think is boring in tropical tanks looks awesome in a marine tank! Not that I would advise just anyone chucking mollies into saltwater..
 
It was a bit weird, we went for three females and they were all adults and clearly female... but after a few months in the tank one became particularly aggressive and started hounding the others, its fin underneath slowly became smaller and more elongated and its dorsal fin grew. It was essentially male! Obviously not fertile and despite hounding females constantly, they never produced babies. Was an interesting process that seemed to take 8-12 days from the initial change in personality to looking and behaving like a male.
 
Odd story lol.

Ive heard of Livebearers changing sex, sometimes its do to the environment placement or maybe the fact that there was no male at all, Hmm. Your right Odd story.

 

[MBOU]

Not as weird as 100 male guppies turning female!
 
They were on a system (so all the same water though passed filter and uv steriliser between tanks) and there were about 400 or so male guppies and no females on the system, new delivery brought in another 300 males and one of the three bags of fish was red cobra males and they clearly were.... looked like this:
 
http/www.asianaquariums.com/jpg/guppy/8397-%2009%20%20web%204R.jpg
 
But within a week all but about 10 had lost all their colour.. we treated them and gave them lots of food, pro colour and spirulina and no improvement... but the more I watched the more I noticed their tails were shrinking... and within 3-4 weeks they all looked utterly different! Like females.... again, don't think any of them were fertile but who knows....
 
They looked like this when we sold them off as male/female? lol
 
http/www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=&imgrefurl=http%3A%2F%2Ffarmingtropicalfish.blogspot.com%2F&h=0&w=0&sz=1&tbnid=IBCYj_UQrpriFM&tbnh=155&tbnw=325&zoom=1&docid=NCBQ8VCVDaU44M&hl=en&ei=E1VDUqWyDciphAf66YHICQ&ved=0CAQQsCU
 
No idea why it happened.... maybe there was too many hormonal males in one body of water...
 
Off topic but again... random!

 

[ncguppy830]

ive seen it in mosquitofish populations.males turn into females so the reproduction line can continue, it typically happens when theres larger populations.