Guppies, Mollies and Platys

[Sunny the Hippie Chick]

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I was going to say they can interbreed too.. The platy and swordtail is the most common to do this.. Also there are to different species of platy.. And one type looks alot like the swordtails.. But the males dont get the swords.. Also the swordtails get larger than the other type of livebearers.. A full grown sword can harrass its tank mates badley.. Most suggest keeping no less than 3-4 females per male sword.. Although cross breeding the platy and sword my be cool. But if some one gets ahold of the mix fry and sell them as pure. It will dilute the gene pool.. The other livebearers dont interbreed as much as the others.. Most the time it never happens at all.. My local pet shop wont even keep the platys and swords in the same tank at the store..

 

[conny63malies]

Start with one pregnant guppy and within weeks youll have a tankful of fish.

 

[EweSheep]

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Well they dont always descend it, dont they?

It's a fin, no where for it to go.

How embarassing LOL!

I was thinking of horse's sheaths....

 

[saddina]

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It's a fin, no where for it to go.

How embarassing LOL!

I was thinking of horse's sheaths....

No worries, it's hard to explain in type, which is why the photos. You'll want to pick your fish yourself, as the staff at pet stores often doesn't know what to look for.

 

[Anianna]

I admit that I have not read the entire thread and somebody may have mentioned this already, but in my experience Mollies are MEAN. My Mollies attacked every other fish in the tank and nipped their fins off. It was awful. I would recommend against Mollies in a community tank. My favorites in a mixed tank were cichlids, plecos, and (the name escapes me at the moment) those shark looking types.

 

[EweSheep]

We got a handful of fish right now, four male guppies and four tetras. They look so lost alllll by themselves LOL! DD picked a skull for the fish to hide in......UGH!

They do not have much of a selection of fake plants. I hate to get new live plants, have NO experience in them at all. I hate to have the fishes nibble on them and find them all gone the next day.

So we will wait awhile before getting more fishes and shop around for some plants or have a setup of half live plants and half fake plants.

 

[ConchRepublic]

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Fish shouldn't eat them to much. Just have to introduce the plants the same way as the fish (floating for 25-30 minutes while slowly adding tank water now and then, then slowly dumping them at the end).

If you want fake plants, I'd say do silk. Plastic can tear the fins like no tomorrow, especially fins on fish like guppies.

 

[silkiechicken]

Good luck with your tank!

If you do get live plants, I wouldn't worry about the fish eating them as much as if you can get the right growing conditions such as substrate, lighting, ferts, Co2, set up for them to actually survive and not get all leggy/turn brown/die. Stock lighting for tanks is usually only good enough for java fern and java moss. If you google "planted aquarium forums" there are a few out there that give a pretty good basic overview on planted tanks.

 

[EweSheep]

Would live plants create ALOT of algae?

 

[silkiechicken]

If your planted tank is balanced, you shouldn't have much of any algae because the plants should take up the nutrients to grow instead of algae forming. However, if the tank is unbalanced for some reason, algae will still grow. Add light to a plain fishtank that doesn't have plants and you will have algae anyway.