Molly death

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Molly death

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Well...in my experimentation of mollies in my reef tank, I've finally lost my first one. It lasted about 2-3 months I guess. Wasn't the water that got it though....it was the rock flower anemone. The Molly is way too big for it to actually eat, but the tentacles are too sticky. Couldn't pull it out.

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Sorry for the confusing double post. Every time I try to edit one. It deletes the picture on the other. Whatever. Y'all get the picture. Molly is hard to make out. It's a Dalmatian Molly, hanging out the mouth pointed to about 1-2 o clock. Right above the white hermit crab shell

[George Monnat Jr]

Ouch. I bought mine from PetSmart in FW and converted them to SW. The ones I lost got stung, too. One of them I converted back to FW, and he's still in my DT. Two years FW->SW->FW.

[Timfish]

Is this an accidental death or a murder?!

[Makena95GT]

WAT. You can convert Mollies like that? am very interested in how this works. Mollies are awesome little fish too!

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Tim, probably a little of both. He was poking around near the nem picking at algae and just got too close I'm guessing. Tried pulling it free with tongs before death occurred but they're just too dang slippery. Several hours later, about 1/2" tail is still hanging out. I picture the rest of it is nothing but skeleton now lol.

Makena, mollies are brackish fish naturally that have the ability to thrive and breed in full fresh or full salinity. If they're healthy enough to start, they can usually go straight from fresh water right to salt after temperature acclimation. Only problem is since they didn't evolve on the reef, they don't recognize alot of predators and will do things like stumble into an anemone. They also don't recognize territories and visual aggression and warnings from other reef fish, so they're subject to getting beat up. Also not strong swimmers so they need time to acclimate to flow. But they're AWESOME algae eaters and great dither fish

[Makena95GT]

That is actually REALLY neat. And they're pretty cheap. I might grab a few for the FW community and see if can get one or two in the SW ank after I get t going. Actually, it makes me think, if the fish is healthy enough, would it be possible to use as a help to the cycle in my SW, then when the tank is cycled, move him/her back to FW? Of course replace the Molly with the Clown I plan on getting after the tank cycles.

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It could be done. But as mentioned before. Using live rock from an established tank won't need much "cycling" as it will already contain most the bacteria needed. It'll just go through a mini cycle while acclimating to the move. Using pure dry rock will naturally result in the typical 8 week buildup of bacteria. Anyhow, back to the question, yeah you could try it out. They're super cheap.

As far as the Molly is concerned in my tank. It swallowed it all the way down to the tail then over the last couple hours started spitting it back out. I went ahead and grabbed it with some tongs and it came out with no forcing. The anemone completely digested it down to the pectoral fins, so in other words, ate its head. Bones and all. I flushed the rest. Guess I don't need to feed the anemone for another week.

I may try the creamsickle mollies from petsmart next. They're more colorful than the dalmations

[bige]

It's interesting how they are oblivious to sw dangers. Also don't recognize certain foods like cyclopeez. They just swim around them. the creamcicles are really pretty.

[Sascha D.]

That is actually REALLY neat. And they're pretty cheap. I might grab a few for the FW community and see if can get one or two in the SW ank after I get t going. Actually, it makes me think, if the fish is healthy enough, would it be possible to use as a help to the cycle in my SW, then when the tank is cycled, move him/her back to FW? Of course replace the Molly with the Clown I plan on getting after the tank cycles.

I converted 5 lyretail mollies to SW using a 4 hour drip acclimation. I poured the bag water into a bucket and set up a drip. Set your drip to 1 drop per 3 seconds for the first hour, then increase it to 1 drop per second for hours 2 and 3 and 2 drops per second for the last hour. All five converted and I didn't lose any.

I started with two males and three females. They graze on microalgae pretty much all day and don't eat pods or microfauna in the aquarium. They tripled in size in three weeks and started breeding on week two. I'm not too familiar with Mollies in FW aquariums, but these show some strange behavior. On week 3, they started hiding more during the day and spent less time in open water. On week 4, the larger ones turned on the smallest member and killed him. On week 5, one jumped out of the aquarium during the night. Which is strange for a Molly but even stranger because they were the only fish in the tank. I'm on week 7 now and the three remaining fish are doing well. They're about 3" long and look to be the size of an adult Royal Gramma. They eat whatever I put into the tank and don't bother any corals.