What fish are best for my tank??

Question
I have a 55 gallon tank right now with 8 balloon Mollies witch are actually from the same parents, i had got the original male and female about a year ago but they had 8 babies and the mom and dad died on me but i still have there 8 kids. Well about a week ago or so I noticed one new baby then today when i got home from work i found one more. I was just wondering though what kind if any other fish i can put in the tank with them. I wanted to put a couple bigger ones in but i don't know which ones wont eat them and which ones will so if you could just give me a suggestion that would be very helpful, thanks.

Answer
Hi Jessa,
So you are concerned about any new fish you add might eat the fry that you currently have in your aquarium? If so, that is indeed a tough one but it does depend on the size of the fry at the moment. If they are bigger around then the adult mollies mouths than you could probably add more bigger mollies or similar community fish like the many tetra species. But even then your fry would be at somewhat of a risk.

I don't know if that's your original plan, but be cautious of adding more mollies into the aquarium. They do breed like rabbits and before too long even a 55 gallon tank can be overrun. Unless, however, you have a group of fish that keep the fry population down like a group of rosy, tiger, or gold barbs or some larger tetras or perhaps even a few angelfish.

What type of aquarium would you like for this to be? A community tank with a big variety of fish? if so, its good to have a 'balanced' tank with fish that tend to swim near the top like danios, hatchetfish, and some livebearers. Fish that swim in the middle areas like many tetras, barbs, rainbowfish, and lots others. And some fish that swim at the bottom to provide some movement at the lower end of your tank like the lovely Corydoras catfish. A group of these little catfish are so entertaining to watch and they are very easy to care for.

Some people like to do an "all-livebearer" tank with swordtails, platies, guppies, and mollies together. This makes for quite a gorgeous display of so many colorful fish but then you must have a plan for the possibility of too many fry. some petstores will take extra fish off your hands and -might- give a little money in return. I have done that before with mollies. ;-)

I do hope this helps and best of luck!!!
Karen~