High Tide Aquatics

Mollies and diseases

svreef

svreef

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I’m considering getting a few mollies from my local PetSmart to eat algae in my frag tank. Should I be concerned about possible diseases or does the switch to saltwater kill everything?
 
I believe it was a humblefish interview on melev's reef youtube video I saw recently where they talk about this. The presiding theory was if the mollies had never seen a salt water environment, the saltwater would not be hospitable to any parasite living in the mollies, thus making them safe after the transition from fresh to salt. If the mollies had seen salt water, it was possible to get some super resistant parasite to both. I would assume the mollies at petco/petsmart have never seen saltwater, but it is hard to know 100% for sure, and I know lots of people on here are ultra careful about parasites.

 
Are they actually that good at eating algae?

Honestly curious.

Lawnmower blenny was the only fish I had that ever really ate algae in a meaningful way. Never had a tank big enough for a tang, they obviously do work.
 
xCry0x said:
Are they actually that good at eating algae?

Honestly curious.

Lawnmower blenny was the only fish I had that ever really ate algae in a meaningful way. Never had a tank big enough for a tang, they obviously do work.
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I don’t know. But I will soon.
 
Srt4eric said:
How easy is the transition from fresh to salt?
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Not hard, I wouldn't recommend it, but I have seen a dump from straight fresh to salt with the mollies appearing unharmed. If I were to do it humanely, I would maybe add .005 spg per day to do a 5 day transition from 1.00 to 1.025 that we use.
 
You have to be really careful to transition a fish from fresh to salt but not the other way around, according to the fish QT write up *from Baybridge Aquarium posted on a BAR forum recently
 
Have been introducing mollies to my reef - Biggest issues have been salinity acclimation and flow. Slow transition has actually been really tricky - in my hands, nitrifying bacteria have a hard time adapting to the change in salinity, and my salinity transition tank had some persistent nitrite issues, despite being fully cycled when it held freshwater. This really stressed the mollies, and I attribute one loss to this (despite W.C. and adding Seachem Prime).

Flow was another huge issue - I introduced some fry that I raised at reef salinity (born from the originally transitioned parents), and added them after 1.5 months of grow-out. They all perished... I think the flow was too much, and they were picked off by hermit crabs. Never found some of them.

I'd recommend doing a bucket salinity acclimation with a drip line, heater and airstone. Doing this over the course of 12-24 hours, adding seachem prime or another detoxifier is ideal. Then, add them in an acclimation box/sump/low flow area so they don't get totally brutalized.

Re. whether they eat algae - Mine haven't touched the GHA, but do pick at the rocks quite a bit. They're fast eaters and out-compete my clowns in the DT, but may go for algae if you get em hungry enough in the frag tank.
 
xCry0x said:
Are they actually that good at eating algae?

Honestly curious.

Lawnmower blenny was the only fish I had that ever really ate algae in a meaningful way. Never had a tank big enough for a tang, they obviously do work.
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Lawnmowers and Tangs both are good algae eaters, as well as emerald crabs! I have seen them go after tufts. I use all 3 in my tank.
 
Iv got my needs satisfied with a ton of snails.

Personally, I'd argue that crabs are really lousy at algae eating. I don't use hermit crabs at all anymore and only keep emerald crabs for the novelty of it.

Whenever there is a topic about adding a fish to do work in the tank, always curious how much they do versus if they just get fat off whatever you feed the rest of the tank
 
Chromis said:
You have to be really careful to transition a fish from fresh to salt but not the other way around, according to the fish QT write up *from Baybridge Aquarium posted on a BAR forum recently
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In general, yes. Mollies and a few other brackish fish are the exceptions. Apparently in the wild they normally swim between freshwater river outlets, brackish deltas, and the ocean, daily. So they are adapted to be able to transition relatively quickly.
 
JVU said:
In general, yes. Mollies and a few other brackish fish are the exceptions. Apparently in the wild they normally swim between freshwater river outlets, brackish deltas, and the ocean, daily. So they are adapted to be able to transition relatively quickly.
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I wonder if striped bass can do the same?
 
Srt4eric said:
I wonder if striped bass can do the same?
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I have 5 sitting in my new tank in an acclimation box.

Been there for a couple days. Transitioned over two days. One did not make it but it was struggling in freshwater by the looks of it so inconclusive.

Overall they will tell me if the live rock had anything on it.

Let me know if I can let ya know anything else.
 
I got a little white Molly today from PetCo to try this out and to be my algae eater in my mini-frag-tank part of my sump. Too small of an area for the pro algae fish, plus I was just kinda curious.

Acclimated to SW over a few hours then plopped her in. Fine so far, we’ll see if she will eat SW algae well.
 
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