Dilan Patel
2500 Club Member
We all experience algae at some point in our reefing careers. The usually way to maintain it is by using algae eating fish such as tangs, rabbitfish, foxfaces, snails etc. Now for those people with nano tanks algae is usually is taken care of by snails but sometimes they need a little help when it comes to bryopsis, hair algae, cyano etc.
Well here comes the FW mollies. These fish are usually seen in petco's, petsmart in the freshwater section. These fish actually prefer to live in brackish and some in full on marine environments. They have all the necessary organs to live a healthy lifestyle in our reef tanks. They tend to be voracious algae eaters and eat a wide range of them. They are considerably cheaper than SW fish, and breed regularly.
I have a frag tank that is 24x15x8in and have struggled to find an algae solution. My foxface out grew it in a matter of months and small tangs just don't do well in there. These mollies prefer calmer waters and would be perfect for my frag tank as I have a gyre like effect for flow. I have picked up 8 black mollies, would have preferred the silver ones but nobody had them locally, at 2.99 a pop. This frag tank currently has very little algae due to running mostly blue light(limits algae considerably). This will follow the progression of introducing the mollies and breeding them (found in the sump mostly)! Enjoy the experiment and if a nano tank with algae issue sounds like a problem your having this may be a viable option or if mine breed that is a molly that is fully accustomed to sw environment. Keep in mind no QT is needed if you are getting a molly that has never touched SW as the parasites they may have cannot live in SW. But as soon as they touch SW they will start to build up immunity to SW parasites so you will have to QT the babies if your worried about parasites. I hope to eventually find some Silver, green or ruby SCATS which acclimate to SW life a lot better and are known to eat...Aiptasia
Day 1: Slow acclimation minimum of 4 hours. Use airstone and either float bag in tank or use heater for proper temp regulation. I personally put the fish from petsmart water into fresh RODI water with prime and floated in my tank. I will slowly exchange water in the bag with my tank water until proper salinity is reached. If they fish are transitioning well they wil poop a lot which is a good thing. This is showing that they are changing their organs from working in fw environment to saltwater. BE slow. Also when picking out mollies it is best to outnumber the male. I ended up picking up all the black mollies they had to increase my chances of having them survive.
Well here comes the FW mollies. These fish are usually seen in petco's, petsmart in the freshwater section. These fish actually prefer to live in brackish and some in full on marine environments. They have all the necessary organs to live a healthy lifestyle in our reef tanks. They tend to be voracious algae eaters and eat a wide range of them. They are considerably cheaper than SW fish, and breed regularly.
I have a frag tank that is 24x15x8in and have struggled to find an algae solution. My foxface out grew it in a matter of months and small tangs just don't do well in there. These mollies prefer calmer waters and would be perfect for my frag tank as I have a gyre like effect for flow. I have picked up 8 black mollies, would have preferred the silver ones but nobody had them locally, at 2.99 a pop. This frag tank currently has very little algae due to running mostly blue light(limits algae considerably). This will follow the progression of introducing the mollies and breeding them (found in the sump mostly)! Enjoy the experiment and if a nano tank with algae issue sounds like a problem your having this may be a viable option or if mine breed that is a molly that is fully accustomed to sw environment. Keep in mind no QT is needed if you are getting a molly that has never touched SW as the parasites they may have cannot live in SW. But as soon as they touch SW they will start to build up immunity to SW parasites so you will have to QT the babies if your worried about parasites. I hope to eventually find some Silver, green or ruby SCATS which acclimate to SW life a lot better and are known to eat...Aiptasia
Day 1: Slow acclimation minimum of 4 hours. Use airstone and either float bag in tank or use heater for proper temp regulation. I personally put the fish from petsmart water into fresh RODI water with prime and floated in my tank. I will slowly exchange water in the bag with my tank water until proper salinity is reached. If they fish are transitioning well they wil poop a lot which is a good thing. This is showing that they are changing their organs from working in fw environment to saltwater. BE slow. Also when picking out mollies it is best to outnumber the male. I ended up picking up all the black mollies they had to increase my chances of having them survive.
