Ananda
Posts: 7,034
From: Chicagoland
Registered: Nov, 2001
|
|
|
Re: Sw molly breeding for fry
|
Posted:
Mar 28, 2003 7:57 PM
|
|
|
> there are essential amino acids that we can only get from eating meat that we need to survive healthily
Not quite 100% true... you can get them from milk, eggs, other non-meat sources....
As to raising mollies, given that you have sw systems already:
- Use the change-out water from your reef systems. Mollies won't mind the nitrates.
- If you're running an RO/DI system, use the reject water for the molly tanks. I've read of people doing that, but don't have an RO/DI to try it. (Besides, I have too many phosphates already in my source water.)
- Or do both...make the molly tank water part of each.
- Varying the salinity a bit every now and then keeps the ichs at bay.
- Mollies will eat just about anything, and they're pigs, too. "Over"-filtration is a good thing. Shoot, if you have any sort of old skimmer kicking around, use it.
- They do need green foods. Spirulina's a favorite. Mine go goofy over floating spirulina pellets, or OSI spirulina flake (which also has lots of shrimp in it), or sinking pleco pellets.
- They go nuts over any sort of bloodworm, blackworm, etc, whether live, freeze-dried, or frozen.
- If you plan on doing this on a fairly large scale, check out Jehmco at www.jehmco.com ... excellent prices on fish food in quantity. Do the math and you'll never buy tiny jars of stuff again.
- Mollies are NOT intelligent fish. When the snails fall off the glass, invariably one or two mollies will taste them to see if they're food.
- If you have to take off for a week, drop the s.g. in the tank to practically zip, and throw in some Elodea/Egaria densa -- the mollies will munch on the leaves.
- You're going to want a species or variety that drops fry monthly. Not all of them do. I *think* the commonly-available black ones do.
- The black ones are also reported to be the best at munching down algae. I'm quoting someone from Aquabotanic's forums on this; I use other fish to keep the algae in check.
- I'd suggest avoiding the brown ones. I was never able to keep those for more than six months. Actually, I suspect any of the red-eyed varieties (aka the "albinos") are more fragile than the others. My one remaining red-eyed molly, all pale orange, is half the size of other mollies his age.
- Some mollies sexually differentiate after only 2-3 months. Those are the fish that will be the smallest adults. The ones that put more early energy into growth will be the biggest adults. My biggest male is Spike Jr, aka The Molly Formerly Known As Spike-ette, who looked like a female for over a year....
- Ghost shrimp are useful for keeping the molly tank clean, as they'll eat the food the mollies miss, as well as provide molly treats in the form of shrimp larvae. I think that these shrimp have distinct genders (unlike, say, cleaner shrimp), as in one tank with four shrimp, there are usually three that are carrying eggs while the smallest one isn't.
Any specific questions? :-)
|
|
