Your Advice Please

Betta5 · Jan 6, 2009

Hiya, I have been out of the fish keeping loop for a while and i want back in! I had to close down my tanks as I had no time for them as i had an explotion of reptiles but now i have cut the collection down and am ready to set up a tank again.

I have my 2'x1x1' tank or my juwel 120 im not sure which to use. As for stocking i am going simple and i only want a few male guppies, a few platies and maybe some balloon mollies. Would these all work in the same tank and thinking about it, im going to need to use the 120 right?

Any help and suggestions as to livestock would be great

thanks very much :good:

pippoodle · Jan 6, 2009

if they are all going to be males then use the 120 and get it planted then you shoudlnt have any dominance issues
if you are going to have females dont get female mollys as these will hybridise with the male guppies

guppys , endlers , limias and mollies will hybridise
platys and swordtails will hybridise

Betta5 · Jan 6, 2009

Is there are problem if they do hybridise?

thanks for the reply BTW

pippoodle · Jan 6, 2009

only that the hybrids could be infertile or deformed and that you wouldnt be able to sell any of them as pure breeds - people dont really want hybrid livebearers due to the infertility fact in some species

guppys and endlers breed well together and have no problems only again a lot of people dont want a hybrid fish so are harder to get rid of than normal livebearer fry- juveys

GShorty1981 · Jan 6, 2009

Muppys are kind of rare tho,even though its theoretically possible its still classed as a myth and only a few pictures have ever surface and usually the pictures are shot down as fake.

I'm sure it is very possible but it doesent seem to be easy,also on this forum a guy bred some Muppys and every batch died pretty quickly.

LauraFrog · Jan 7, 2009

IMO if you only want one tank, don't get any females full stop. You know about the sperm storage, right? Basically, for every female you get, you will end up with 20 odd fry a month, for the next six months. With this reproduction rate, in almost any tank you will get enough surviving to thoroughly overstock it... and if you actually try to raise them I'm sure you can imagine you'd be overrun. Too many fish or too many reptiles... hmmm...

Add some salt to the water. The mollies in particular really need it, I've had a far higher success rate keeping inbred pet store guppies using brackish water, and all livebearers like it.