Salt and Mollies
There has been some talk about the addition of salt to tanks lately. I just read an article by Robert Ellerman that appears in the latest issue of the ALA publication LIVEBEARERS. “The Giant Sailfin Mollies of Central America: _Poecilia velifera_ and _Poecilia petenensis_”. In this article, he covers his history of keeping various mollies, especially with relation to the two species in the title. I should note that I have the submission he made to the publication, and not the actual published article, which had some editing done prior to publication. As I understand it, the editing removed some of the taxonomic discussion he had in the original submission.
But, back to the point. I am including here a paragraph from his discussion on his tank conditions for these fish, and I will let this stand by itself.
“Each species was placed in its own 55 gallon aquarium in an extremely sunny room. The tanks were each filtered by a large Eheim canister filter - Professional Model # 2226 I believe — and sponge filtered power heads for simple water movement - so necessary for good sailfin molly development. I maintained a temperature range in the tanks from 78-84 F. The tanks were bare bottom but contained multiple clay pots of various species of aquarium plants. Drift wood with attached Java Fern was also included as a decoration. Both tanks contained a large population of pond and red ramshorn snails. Each aquarium received massive water changes 2-3 times a week - around 80-90 %. Local Houston tap water runs a pH of about 7.8 and has a GH and KH both around 18 which is the perfect water — hard and alkaline — for sailfin mollies. Nothing else was added to the water - especially not salt. In the early 1970’s, Dr. Norton exploded the age old myth that mollies required salt in their water. She found that salt did not matter with mollies one way or the other, but space, water movement and cleanliness did. Now, I’m sure there are populations and species of mollies that do need salt in their water but the sailfin species - or at least the vast majority of their populations and domesticated varieties - are not those species. I would guess that the salt habit was formed from its use as an all purpose disease treatment in stores and home aquariums in the early years of the hobby (It still works well on some diseases - like velvet.), from the fact that latipinna and velifera populations exist in brackish to salt water in the wild (I’m not sure about petenensis populations) and from the fact that the area of the country where the hobby originated - the Northeast - often has rather neutral to soft and slightly acid water and salt helped make this water more suitable for the keeping of these species. Sailfin mollies do not usually like soft acid water.”
\Steve//
Category: AquaticLife
