Babies Into New Tank

[Trixibelle]

Hi

I am hoping to put our mollie fry into a new tank which I have set up for them, as they have been in their plastic nursery for almost two weeks. It will be nice to see them swimming freely.

The tank has normal fish gravel as the bottom and they are used to the plastic flat bottom of their nursery. Will they be OK with the gravel?

Once they are big enough I want to seperate the two tanks into girls and boys, so we don't get overrun. I read somewhere that they can start to breed from about six months old. Is this correct?

Also I have had our three adult fish two weeks tomorrow. I have done a 20% water change every other day and the whole time all the test results....PH, ammonia, nitrites and nitrates have been perfect. When should I stop doing these water changes?

I was thinking of taking out 50% of the water out of the new tank for the fry and replacing it will water out of the other big tank is that a good idea?

So many questions!!

Thanks in advance for any advice!

Trix

 

[Trixibelle]

Could I also ask about filtration. I have a small Fluval filter in the tank where the two week old mollie fry will go. Will this suck them up? If it's not suitable could you please advise what is? thank you........

 

[OldMan47]

I have some 2 day old molly fry in a 55 gallon tank. The filter in that is a sponge filter with a powerful power head to circulate the water. The fry can now, after only 2 days, hold their position against that big power head's flow. I would not worry about a suitably sized filter in any tank, especially a small one. There is no point to moving water between tanks except as a way of ensuring that the water the fry go into is the same as the water that they are coming from. Do lots of water changes on the new fry tank to prevent the build of any poisons while the filter becomes cycled and you will be fine. As soon as you can sex the fry, they can too and they will start trying to breed. Start separating out the males as soon as they become obvious to you.
The adult tank needs good sized water changes whenever your liquid type test kit shows ammonia or nitrites present. A routine of 20% every other day can be carried on for years with no harm except to your patience, but I don't find it necessary once the tank's filter is well established. That is where the test kit comes in. You need to do the water changes based on the build up of poisons in the tank and I don't hold back when I do that. When I have levels above where I want them, I do 80% or larger changes so that I don't spend all day trying to get things right. The fish always love their new dechlorinated water.