Molly

[Mark Hewitt]

I would like to get some mollies for my tank. I have no desire or interest in breeding fish therefore I don't want any females!

Ideally I'd like to get three mollies.

But will it cause a problem if there is more than one male molly in a tank? Will they start fighting? If so would getting one molly and one platy, for example mean they will just ignore each other?

 

[7Enigma]

Molly's are brackish water fish (ie they need salt in the water for good health and disease/parasite resistance). Tetras are freshwater and do not tolerate the salt. Platy are very nice fish that would work fine in your tank. The problem, as you mentioned, is getting only one sex to prevent their extremely prolific breeding. Males show coloration better than the females and are recommended as a female can be pregnant and soon you'll have large amounts of platy of both sex. Another option are guppy, and can be EXTREMELY beautiful depending on the species. Take care if you decide on long-finned varieties as I do not know if the tetras will play nice (fin nip). Same rules apply with them breeding however.

Goodluck.

 

[Mark Hewitt]

Thanks for that. I was torn between mollies and platies anyway, you think they are the way to go then? Would keeping male platies present any issues with regards to agression etc?

I did have a shoal of 3 guppies, but sadly, they all died

 

[7Enigma]

Thanks for that. I was torn between mollies and platies anyway, you think they are the way to go then? Would keeping male platies present any issues with regards to agression etc?

I did have a shoal of 3 guppies, but sadly, they all died

From my experience both platy and guppy are peaceful community species. There is always the chance for a psycho fish of any species, just like you'll hear stories about peaceful dwarf puffers and male bettas in community tanks. There's no guarantees in fish keeping.

With that said typically aggression is due to fish species, line of sight (LOS) issues, and stocking level. Understocked tanks rarely have bad aggression problems, as do heavily planted/decorated tanks. The real problems are when you have a relatively bare tank and are overstocked somewhat (typically how all beginners start out and why we get tons of, "my fish are being attacked!" posts).

Severely overstocked barren tanks actually have an opposite effect usually. The fish are under so much stress and there is no way to easily claim a territory that they normally play nice (but are much more prone to disease from the stress). This is why aquarium shops can have extremely overstocked tanks (filtration aside) with seemingly little aggression.

Anyways, I would get single variants of platy to brighten up the colors in the tank that will work well with your current stocking. In my tank I have a blue platy type that has orange around the body which overall has a very dark presence, and a beautiful silver/red/polka dot type that stands out against my plants well. There's probably a near unlimited variety of types out there between shops and private breeders (I was given these by a friend from his personal pond that has thousands so I doubt the ones I have fall into a specific brand name). That is one of the cool things when breeding; you never know what offspring will look like. Most times they are similar to the parents but every so often you get a recessive gene or mutation that has them completely different.