Freshwater Tropical Fish-Mollies and Guppies

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By Lee Dobbins

There is a large variety of freshwater tropical fish that you can add to your fish tank but my two favorites are Mollies and fancy guppies. These fish are livebearers meaning that instead of laying eggs, they give birth to a little tiny fish and they are, in fact, quite easy to breed even for a novice aquarist.

Mollies

A Molly is a great fish for a beginner hobbyist. These fish are fairly hearty and will withstand adversity and conditions well so if you make a mistake you can have a good chance of you for surviving. You want to be sure that you have a least a 15 gallon tank and you have a good heater as these fish like the temperature to be between 70 and 82°F.

There are two general types of Mollies to choose from the Sail fin and the short finned. Most typically what you will find a short finned Mollies - the Black Molly and the gold dust Molly at your pet store. This Sail fins are much larger than have a striking shape but are harder to care for.

Mollies can be fed the regular flake food that you find in the fish store but you might want to think about mixing in some freeze dried blood worms and even throwing in a few black worms or two for a treat. If your finish tank does not have a lot of algae you’ll want to also supplement their diet with spirulina flakes.

When keeping Mollies it’s important to have more females than males. other fish that will coexist good in a fish tank with mollies include the Plecostomus, Swordtails, Angelfish, Corydoras, Catfish, Silver Tip Tetras, Red Serapes and Black Skirts.

if given the proper environment and care Mollies can grow to be five inches long and live to be five years old.

Fancy Guppies

The male fancy guppy is beautiful with a long flowing tail light comes in a variety of beautiful colors - golds, greens, blues, Reds, blacks. The female, on the other hand is rather plain coming in grayish brown. Many people love the guppy is a freshwater tropical fish and keep tanks with several copies in them which really maximizes the beauty of their colors as they swim in a school.

if you plan on keeping, or maybe even breeding, fancied up these then you want to be sure to have a big enough tank to provide them with enough room in a good heater as they like it to be between 78 and 82°F.

On the whole, guppies are pretty easy to keep that you can feed them floating flake food supplemented with frozen brine tramp or freeze dried blood worms.

You want to keep twice as many females as males in your aquarium. You can also keep Neon Tetras, ghost shrimp, glass fish, gouramis, dwarf frogs and catfish. Given the right conditions guppies can grow to be about 2 inches long and live for around three years.

Both mollies in guppies will do better if you add a little bit of marine salt to your freshwater fish tank - just one tablespoon for every 5 gallons should do. You might be able to keep them in a fish tank together but just be aware that the larger mollies can attack the guppies.

Lee Dobbins writes for http://www.fish-tank-guide.com where you can learn more about fish tank keeping and find out about more freshwater tropical fish to add to your fish tank.

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August 18 2008 10:40 pm | Fish

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