Was Told By Petstore It Couldn't Be Done

[prism127]

I read online a while back that you could take Black Mollies and if you had patients they could slowly be aclimated to full sat water.

I talked to a the petstore owner and was told they could not go full salt.

Now I am always up to a challange so I setup my 30 gallon tank, added sand and a few small pieces of live rock, got the salt level to aprox 1.023 and headed to the local pet store.

There I bought a trio 2 female and 1 male black mollies.
I then put the mollies with the fresh water in a standard milk pitcher and hung it on the edge of the tank.

for the next 9 hours every 10-15 minutes I would put 2 table spoons of the salt water from the tank into the milk pitcher until it was completely full.

I then dumped the 3 fish and water into the tank.

I watched them for a few hours and they seemed to be doing very well.

before I went to bed I fed them a little bit of frozen brine shrimp and was amazed that they were eating very well.

Now after about 3 weeks the black mollies are still doing very well and to my shock yesterday I looked into the tank and there was 4 little baby mollies swimming at the top of the tank.

If you know mollies they have live birth of their babies.

I then grabbed my small breeding mesh and set it up in the same tank and caught the 4 babies and placed them in it.

it has been over 24 hours now and the babies and eating and doing well.

the pics attached are of the male and one of the female mollies and the 4 babies

I hope you enjoy this and will be happy to help anyone who is looking to try this themselves

 

[Pistol]

Most mollies will acclimate to salt, they are actually brackish fish that have to be acclimated to fresh water, I acclimated a pair to salt in 30 minutes.

 

[TORX]

This would be awesome for all the people looking for small fish or school fish. Just a slower acclimation process and you could have a whole new group of fish in your tank. When I saw this, definitely is tempting.

 

[TORX]

There are some cool molly's out there, I want to try some dalmatian molly's. There is also a small market for silver molly's that are tattooed...yes...google it. lol.

 

[derrick orosz]

I have a small 20 gallon cube that was given to me and i just have a half dozen dallmation mollys in it...now im temped to start dripping them into my fish only tank...hmmmm

 

[heath]

yes it is amazing.. before I started with salt I had fresh, mollies, black, silver and Dalmatians, they bred like rabbits and our local fish store bought all that I had, paid for my first salt water fish.. there are a lot of different fresh water that can be acclimated to salt..just 2 cents worth..

 

[EricTMah]

This is how people cycled their marine tanks back in the 80's. Works really well. Also mollies are good at eating hair algae sometimes too.

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[Neopimp]

Very interesting. Let us know when they shrivel up kidding


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[KBennett]

There's a strain of guppies bred for full salt water now too....

 

[reefgeek]

A very inexpensive way to establish a reef aquarium. Seen it done in a few tanks, I find they tend to occupy the top most part of the aquarium and rarely venture to depth. They will readily spawn and coexist with reef inhabitants just fine.

For those with predatory frogfish you can establish a somewhat reliable food source with enough mollies as well, I did this several years ago.

 

[TORX]

Great idea for the frog fish or predator fish. I never thought of that. Damn you @reefgeek, I had myself talked out of a frog or lion due to feeding habits, now you just made that easy

 

[curiousphil]

Very neat idea. Wonder if these would be a good natural food source for my marine betta...

 

[jeffopentax]

Fairly certain feeding live freshwater fish to marine fish is a no-no. Read that many times when researching what to feed lions and eels.

 

[yveterinarian]

Congrats on the success of your experiment and your new babies. It is always nice to read success stories.

 

[J_T]

Fairly certain feeding live freshwater fish to marine fish is a no-no. Read that many times when researching what to feed lions and eels.

The problem is they are not a natural food. Thus the chance of disease (even acclimated, and qt'd, they will still have bacteria they are immune to, that may harm your dinner guest) as well, they need to be gut loaded to have enough nutrients. Thats easy enough to do.

Damsels are easy enough to breed if setup for it. They are a much better choice for live food.


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[reeferkeeper420]

Anyone know if mollies would bother corals at all?

 

[AdInfinitum]

A very inexpensive way to establish a reef aquarium. Seen it done in a few tanks, I find they tend to occupy the top most part of the aquarium and rarely venture to depth. They will readily spawn and coexist with reef inhabitants just fine.

For those with predatory frogfish you can establish a somewhat reliable food source with enough mollies as well, I did this several years ago.

I kept several brackish systems years ago and also bred mollies as a food source for dwarf lions, hamlets and sea horses.

Brackish fish can all go full fresh and full salt and can swing between them in a matter of minutes. Think of tidal estuaries... fresh water during low tides that suddenly become full salt when the tide comes in and they do that cycle over and over every day.

However most of them need the swings in salinity to maintain long term health and eventually suffer if kept in full fresh or full salt long term. See the many brackish fish sold as fresh water whatever's in the lfs.

 

[reefgeek]

Fairly certain feeding live freshwater fish to marine fish is a no-no. Read that many times when researching what to feed lions and eels.

While I agree to a certain extent I also have to wonder how 'tainted' the fish may be given that the mollies are eventually several generations removed from the lfs stock and fed a healthy marine diet..worked for me just fine in my frogfish days.

Black molly dinner.

 

[jeffopentax]

While I agree to a certain extent I also have to wonder how 'tainted' the fish may be given that the mollies are eventually several generations removed from the lfs stock and fed a healthy marine diet..worked for me just fine in my frogfish days.

Black molly dinner.

I didn't mean they'd be 'tainted', just that they don't necessarily contain the same nutrition as prey that would normally be consumed in the ocean. Like I said, just found it mentioned numerous times while trying to find out what/how often to feed lions and eels. Just thought I'd throw it out there for anyone considering using mollies as feeders. If it works, great

 

[theyangman]

Who needs a lion fish?