agressive orange mollies .....

[rach85]

Hey guys , im new to this site so see how this goes .. just wanted to ask a quick q ..

i have a tank full of all sorts .. tetras.. zebra fish.. orange and blue guaramies , orange and black mollies .. guppies.. neons.. a syamise fighter fish .. frogs and plecs etc ..

we bought the black mollies a few weeks ago .. 2 black ones , but one of them (now presuming it was the female) .. got harrased to literally death and died within a few days because the other one wouldnt leave it alone .. the other one seemed really lost without any others in there so today we bought 2 orange ones ..thing is since we have put them in the tank, the orange mollies that is , inparticularly one is really aggressive towards the guaramies .. so much so we have had to seperate it as it was constantly nipping.. and the 2 blue guramies were new so it was stressing them out ..

we have never had any other pobs with aggressive fish, only the odd squable amounst themselfs some times but nothing persistant ..

any one else had something like this and in future is there any combinations to avoid .. i really like angel fish but have never got any because i heard they were vey teritorial and aggresive ..

thanks

rachael x

 

[Tasha]

Hi Rachael and welcome to AA!!

What size tank do you have? how long has it been set up and running?

Yes aggressive fish is part of the hobby. Sometimes its a bad as you descriebed and they will kill each other.... thats IMO up to us to stop. If you noticing these behaviors we have to do something about it. Personally I put the aggressor into a "time out" in our breeder/maturation tank. I do a couple days at first or longer if looks like it needs it. For me it worked pretty good.

I know other people take fish out and put into another tank (thats suitable and cycled, etc) for a month then try and add it back in.

Angel fish grow very large and will need a LARGE aquarium... Also you may want to look into the compatibilty of your fish you do have to help with aggression issues... I know that dwarf guramnis, are very shy fish....

 

[TraceyB4602]

I don't like mollies much, I have one in my tank but I did have 3. They were females and one was very very aggressive. One got picked on to death and then I decided it was time for the aggressor to go. I added her to my mothers tank who had a male Molly and she has been good ever since. My last molly is happy as can be alone. I would suggest getting a male and a female. Yes there will be fry but the other fish can have snacks or you can try an breed them and sell them your choice.

I have also had success with QTing aggressive fish. They weren't mollies but they were aggressive. I would take them out every time and then after a couple hours put them back in and keep repeating that till it stopped.

 

[gkuzel]

Mollies can be such nasty little buggers! When you purchase mollies (if you do in the future), you should always have a 2:1 female, ratio. It helps curb the aggression (in most cases) amongst the mollies. But other than that, I'd typically advise staying away from them with gouramis. I've seen a Molly eat a neon blue gourami alive (by the time my tank was cycled to save him it was far too late).

 

[rach85]

thanks for all the replies guys ...

my tank is about 3 ft (my guestimate).. been up and running about 8 months and to be fair even though im not exactly clued up .. had a little case of white fin once but thats been pretty much it .. not really had any problems on the aggresive side up till now ..

the tank seems alot happer now that the troublesome mollie has been seperated .. so in there now is one black and one orange and they seem fine .. i agree though im not keen on them as a whole and prob wouldnt get any more if anything hapened t these ..

the guaramies is a bit of a weird one .. iv had the 2 big orange ones for ages .. really placid and like to stay in the background .. so i said to the guy in the fish shop yesterday and he said yeh they like it to be a few of them .. so i bought the 2 blue ones .. who are absolutely fine .. not timid or shy at all and the orange ones still hide away .... weird

another little issue i have on my hands ... i have 5 small tiger barbs .. they like to stay together but have never caused any probs beofre .. my god they have got it in for the syamise fighter .... not so much today but saying that its tending to stay out of the way ...do you think its because there is a little "pack" of them so to speak .. shoukd i seperate a few of them till things settle down a bit ?

 

[Tasha]

my friend had tiger barbs and they were mean little buggers!!

 

[Bud]

Tiger barbs love to nip at long fins. I hear the solution to that is to add more of them to their school. I believe the magic number is 7. I have 9 at the moment, but have no problems because besides the cories, they're the only inhabitants. Good luck!

 

[missie]

I had 4 mollies at one pt and got rid of all 4 of them because all 4 were attacking my gourami.. i tried different mollies and for the most part they have been ok...however onee of my females is preggo i think ...and the other female has since become really aggressive to the other mollies...ive just about had it with these meanies!!!

 

[beepboop]

I have a molly that chases my platy, but gets along with my dwarf gourami. Those are the only fish I have in a 10 gallon. I also have two ghost shrimp. He hasn't hurt the platy, but has driven it into hiding.

I got them all at the same time, so one wasn't newer than the others.

I tried isolating the molly inside the tank with a breeder net for 3 days. The platy came out during that time, but once I release the molly, he chased the platy back into hiding. I like the way the molly looks though, so I might give the platy away.