How long do Mollies live?

[fishycanuck]

You should certainly test for Ammonia, Nitrate and Nitrite as well as pH. I'm not sure that the other parameters you have tested are relevant to freshwater fish.

I don't think Cycle is worth the money. It claims to be a source of the good bacteria, but is shipped and stored throughout the year, subject to extremes of heat and cold. You must use Prime or some other sort of dechlorinator, or none of your fish will do well.

[renadia]

Hi Diane,
I tried mollies twice now and have had poor results, my test kit did not have a NO3 Test just a NO2 test it read 0.3 I have been using cycle every water change. What kind of fish am I going to try?  I have had tiger barbs in my other tank and they are doing good.  What fish do you like? any recommendations?

Hi Randy

I have a 75 community tank and these are my fish : 1 Koi angel, 2 Opaline gourami 2 Drarf gourami, 2 Pearl gourami, 4 Longfin Serpae Tetra, 6 cardinal Tetra, 7 Rasbora espei, 10 Cherry barb, 2 pleco, 3 Clown loach, 3 cories and 1 catfish.  

My favorites are the dwarf gourami, pearl gourami, cardinal Tetras and the clown loaches (the loaches need a large tank)they have very nice colours and are peacefull fish.

For the test NO3 I had to buy the Nitrate test separatly and I think it's a good one to have. It gives me an idea of the maitenance of the tank, you want to keep that number low to have a healty tank. The ammonia and nitrite should be zero, the best thing to use is Prime, they have made me a Prime fan here  It's really worth using, I had major cycling going on with buying a second hand 55 gal and then a second hand 75 gal. The 55 gal is at the end of cycling now because the bioload was to big for my fluval 404 ( 5 Koi'S and 5 goldfish from my pond) little piggies so I added a second filter that is gathering the good bacteria. Fore more info on this product go at this link:
http://www.seachem.com/products/product_pages/Prime.html

You can double and tripple the dose when cycling, I would do that until your Amonia and Nitrite are both at 0. Then I would gradually add new fish like gouramies    Catfish are pretty cool to!

Good luck and post what your going to buy , I'm curious 
Diane

[Randy19615]

Hi Diane,
thanks for the advice. I am in a small community I could not find Prime in Brockville so I will have to make a field trip to Ottawa. Where do you buy your Prime?  I am still looking at fish.... I wanted to find a fish that would grow about 4 to 5 inches. I do like angel fish but I have heard that they are hard to keep.


take care
Randy

[renadia]

You can go to Big AL's they have prime and lots of fish 

http://www.bigalsonline.ca/  they have 2 stores in Ottawa. If your a OVAS member you get 15% on your purchases.

I have a Koi angel in my community tank. He was part of the package when I bought the second hand 75 gal. He got injured poor thing and lost a fin on the side. I removed him and put him in a 10g hospital tank for 3 weeks with Melafix.
That gave him a chance to recuperate, he's now in my 75 gal (that's the community) and doing great, he does swim a bit loopsided  but that his charm. He always comes tothe glass when i go near and I feed them frozen bloodworms and he comes and eat the piece that I hold, if I movi it some pieces fall off but he wont go for those he follows my hand and eats from that piece. He's a charmer  Here's a picture.
Did you check the nitrate? If not bring your water to BA and they will test it for you.

Good luck
Diane

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[Randy19615]

Hi Diane,
your angel fish is beautiful....  I will think about  an angel for my aquarium. I will make a trip to Big Al's and see what they have...

I would love to have a 65 or 75 gallon tank one day

[Melody]

A little late in here, but I wanted to say that although Mollies can be sensitive to tank conditions, they do thrive and are beautiful, friendly fish.  I had a 33G that I couldn't seem to keep Mollies alive in, try as I may.  Then I found out the undergravel filter had trapped all sorts of stuff under it and that was my problem.  I pulled the UGF, vacuumed it out and haven't had a prob with Mollies since.  They are the first fish to alert me if something is up with the tank though.  If I skip one waterchange, they start to act off. They need regular water changes with thorough gravel vac's and good filtration.  They don't require salt, but I use a little seasalt in all of my Livebearer tanks anyway.

Only black Mollies are somewhat prone to fungus/ich.  The rest aren't anymore prone to it than other fish.  Sailfin Mollies like a heated aquarium and should be 5-6" when fully grown.  However, most Mollies at the retail can be any combination of three species, so the size is difficult to predict.

Hopefully you'll find the source of the issue and give them a try again.  If you do, try to find a private breeder near you.  They've already been raised in the same environment and have that much less to adjust to.  They also haven't been exposed to less than optimum conditions and a zillion diseases.

Good luck in whatever you choose!