12 Gallon Stocking Advice

[Divigation]

We are new to the hobby (and the forum) with a 12 gallon cube that a friend gave us. While it is 12 gallons, it has the back compartment for filtration and so the fish are contained in what amounts to more like 10 gallons of room. Trying to learn as we go and hoping to avoid irreversible mistakes or unhappy fish.

Our tank is cycled and started with 2 dwarf gouramis. We added two mystery snails and three balloon belly mollies (2 female and a male so this number is likely dynamic). [I did not realize that the mollies would eat algae and gorge themselves on algae tabs, so now the snails get veggies over night.] This weekend we added some rotala.

We are not looking to make any changes now, letting the plants take root and the aquarium adjust to them. Looking forward I wanted to get feedback on stocking. I am curious what more the tank could handle and what suggestions you have considering the tank and current stock.

Thanks for the feedback.

 

[calfishguy]

The balloon mollies need to go in a bigger tank 20g. The dwarf gouramies and snail are fine. In the future I would add a school of Tetras such as neon or cardinals or serpae etc. you could also add a couple ghost shrimp.

 

[Divigation]

Thanks for pointing this out, this is the kind of thing I was worried about. One thing that becomes apparent quickly on AA is how unreliable LFS advice can be. So my follow up question would be if we set up a 20 gallon tank for the mollies, are they going to do better in a brackish tank. If we are going to make a Molly tank we might as well make it ideal for them... Do they do better in some salt or is it just that they can do salt?

 

[calfishguy]

There is a great deal of opinions and discussions on mollies being brackish or not. I myself am convinced that they are brackish. I would recommend that you keep them in brackish water. However most lfs don't so they have kinda evolved. If your lfs keeps them in brackish keep them in brackish if your lfs keeps them in fresh keep them in fresh. This will keep the stress from switching water away.

 

[Divigation]

Thank you for the advice. Along those lines we will keep them fresh as the LFS did.

 

[calfishguy]

Many people have kept them in both they thrive in both.