am overstocked?

[adamclement]

Hi,

I have a 30 gallon - 3ft tank, planted with 3 amazon swords, lots of camboba, some crypts, some java ferns and whorled pennywort, with some amazon frogbit floating around.

Im using ae aqua carbon with 2 t5s for lighting. Filter is an Ehiem 2313 external canister. Getting good growth from plants....

livestock i have is:

1 apple snail
10 assasin snails
1 SAE
3 guppies
2 albino cories
8 panda cories
8 sailfin mollies

All seem happy, nitrite and ammonia are at zero, nitrates around 15-20...

am i overstocked?

i have been offered a few platies....would this be pushing it?


adam

 

[LyndaB]

The only thing I'd be worried about is the school of sailfin mollies. They can grow over 6 inches. If that happens with that many in your tank, you'd be in trouble. Not sure what the average size in a home tank is.

 

[BBradbury]

Overstocked Question

Good morning adam...

That many Mollies in such a small tank will create problems for you. My limited research into Mollies gave the following: An extremely high maintenance fish. You must pay close attention to water conditions, diet and water temperature (80 degrees). You should maintain hard, basic water and brackish conditions.

In general, these fish need large tanks and lots of clean water flushed through the tank weekly. Changing a minimum of half the tank water weekly is important. Two Mollies per 20 gallons of tank volume is recommended.

B

 

[adamclement]

hi.

am looking at re-homing some of the mollies.

was told at pet shop that mollies should only be kept in groups of 6 or more (like a skooling fish).

will they be happy if there's only 2 or 3 in the tank...?

 

[LyndaB]

At one time, I had 3 and they were fine. They didn't school but basically were all over the tank as individuals.

 

[aqua_chem]

Most livebearers are not schooling by nature. Many of then are social with their own species, b but do not require it.

Cories and SAE are both schooling fish though.

 

[Aron]

Mollies are not that hard to look after, I have kept them for years and don't change that much water that often. I do, like you rightly said, however add salt to make the water slightly brackish. I do think that cories do not like the salt though.

Even if you are still worried and want to rehome some of the mollies, they will readily socialise with guppies, with them both being from the poecilidae family. Kind of like tricking them into thinking there are more of them in your tank.

The only way I would be overly worried about these is if there were more male than females, so if you do rehome some, I would recommend most of the males go first, even I they are the prettiest.

 

[DukeNukem713]

your fine those are all tiny fish. **** i bet you could get away with double that.

my buddy has a 15gal with lots of live plants, 2 convicts, a small dempsey, a small pleco, a small green terror, a small firemouth, 4 tetras, and 4 platties and they are all happy and healthy. **** even the female convict laid eggs in the MIDDLE of the tank and still the male convict hasnt caused any serious harm

 

[Nu-Nu the eel]

Ya i kinda agree. U have very few fish, i dont no what sailfin mollies are and how big they get, but ur other fish are ok. I suggest bumping up ur cories to 6

 

[absolutangel04]

You have the 30g long it seems, so that is good for stocking. I think you could stand to re-home a couple of mollies though. Maybe 4-5 would be a bit more managable for the bioload. But, it depends a bit of how well the fish get along and how often you do water changes and what your water parameters are constistently. My mollies have all capped out at about 4 inches though. Also, sae should have friends IMO. I think your corys are ok since you have so many, even though they are different species.

 

[Aces11]

I agree with the above as I would recommend rehoming just a couple of your mollies. Livebearers don't really need schools and mollies have big bioloads I think. If you got rid of few mollies you could probably add a few platys though.