Hi to all and a Couple Q's

Hi Everyone

Since this is my first post on this particular forum just a quick bit of background:

I have a 3ft planted tank with sailfin mollies. I've got two males (one marbel and one orange) and 6 females (3 Golden, one Marbel, and 2 Green). Before that I had a marine tank which housed only local indig species for aprox. 5 years.

I've got two Q's:

1. I'm looking to get a bottom feeding fish for my Molly Tank, The PH is around 8.1 so the usual pleco's loaches and Cories aren't ideal.... does anyone have any suggestions??

2. My water has a white cloudy tinge. At first It hought it may be from the gravel as it cleared up soon after I started cycling the tank. Unfortunately it has come back (after adding new plants mind you) and will not go away no matter what I try? Could this be due to the fact that I'm using marine sand for the substrate (in order to harden the water as well as look good) which is leaching into the water?

Lookin forward to your responses

P.s. attached pic is my Marble Sailfin Male

 

Hi KiazerG ,, welcome to Tasa,, nice pic ,,, sounds like it cold be the substrate.

 

Hi KiazerG

Welcome to the Forum.
I would be very cautious of using anything Marine based for Tropical fish. The Marine substrate will more than likely leech something into the water. Bear in my that salt water is very different to tropical water, and it might be that the salt water stops the substrate from leeching whatever the fresh water is allowing.

pH 8.1 is not too serious when keeping tropicals. Rule of thumb when it comes to pH is NOT to aim for the ideal 7.0, but rather to maintain a constant. As long as the pH remains CONSTANT, then generally the tropical fish will be fine. (When you start playing around with the more fussy fish like discus etc, you will need to be a bit more careful with pH.) So don't stress too much about your pH... and definately DO NOT add any pH buffers... this caused pH spikes etc and will stress the fish out.

I've heard a good saying that mollies are so hardy that they will "live in piss". One of the tanks that I help set up at a house we built had Mollies in the tank. They suddenly "appeared" out of no where oneday as tiny fry whilst the tank was cycling. We could only imagine that they arrived as eggs in the live rock.

The Mollies will more than likely survive the marine substrate, but I would seriously consider changing it to a Silica sand or gravel, especially if you want to go the planted route.

 

dont stress I'm not an absolute noob Mollies are livebearers so I cant for the life of me think of how they may have ended up in the cycling tank other than that any water added during the addition of rock etc. contained the fry???

Mollies also enjoy hard water and some people subscribe to the addition of salt (something i'm not to keen on for the plants sake). I was going to set it up as a Cichlid Tank but changed my mind at the last second (already have a 2ft with Breeding Kribensis at my Dads place).

Zoom: I think you're spot on though with the suggestion of changing substrate, any Idea where I can get silica from without paying pet shop prices? I heard Sandblasting sand is a goodie if washed properly?

 

You could try your local Nursery for some riversand if you like the look, or a pool shop for filter sand in big bags that are usually quite cheap, and safe to use

 

Marine sand will up your ph to 8.1+. And yes 8's is a problem.

Only fish that I can think of that tolerate such high alkilinity are Rift Valley cichlids and mollies

 

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