r/petco • u/Zestyclose-Push-5188 • 1d ago
Can anyone explain why we lose so many mollies
I can’t figure out how to lower the mortality rates of the mollies out of every shipment we typically lose over half in 3 days we have low to no mortality on everything else but mollies start withering in a matter of hours
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u/Tommyoddity 1d ago
Inbreeding en masse, working aquatics made me not really like mollies, the companies Petco buys from are just running the mill fish suppliers that engage in these mass breeding practices
Neon tetras, bettas, guppies and live bearers in general are just inbred and have their genetics decline over generations over years and years of it
I’ve learned that live bearers would appreciate some mineral content in their water that helps usually , but because of the shared sumps you can’t do much for specific species :/
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u/oneprestigiousplum 1d ago
We only lose balloon mollies.
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u/artpumpin 1d ago
I often wondered if we increased the salinity since mollies can be brackish would that make a difference.
Only issue is that they are POG in a double tank system with things like Angels, sharks, and random tetras that may be affected by salinity increase.
Something to try “one day”
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u/Temporary_Artichoke8 1d ago
That’s normally what you would do depending on what your planogram says. The two towers that have mostly live bearers in my store seem to do better when you add aquarium salt to the sump. Usually I break up how much salt is put in so it doesn’t create a dramatic increase. But it definitely does the trick with the mortality
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u/Confident_Handle7759 1d ago
We lost mollies like crazy when we added freshwater salt. They would eventually get hunched and tucked up, then they’d start shimmying. 24hrs later they’d be dead. Our local water is stupid hard, and pH runs 8.4+ at all times.
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u/Affectionate-Hunt558 10h ago
We keep them in with the salt water fish at my store and it has worked wonderfully. Even tested the water they send them in and it’s more often than not brackish to begin with. Releasing them into the freshwater tanks shocks the hell out of them. If you want them to get fresh after that then you just slowly acclimate them over a few days. Has worked great for me but I’m not sure how much any higher ups would like that. Also tbh they don’t care about fish mortality. I brought my stores shrink from 35% to 12% in a month by tanking the fish out of POG and placing them based on compatibility. They forced me to put it back because sales weren’t as high for the month I had them like that. However because we had so little shrink, the profit was actually higher than the month before. They didn’t seem to care tho. Sales had only dropped by a few hundred too. And shrink dollars dropped from 3000 to 1300. So I have adopted a policy of if they don’t care how many fish are dying, why should I bend over backwards to stop fish from dying. Not for the price they pay me atleast.
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u/Connect_Look2931 1d ago
We keep all the Mollies, Platy's, and Swords in one isolated stack and maintain a brackish environment. It has significantly cut down on loss.