breeding mollies

[stonedaquarium]

hi there,

I think some of my mollies are pregnant as their bellies are ballooning everyday... i feed them once a day so i doubt im over feeding them... any one have any suggestions what to do? in case i get fry what should i feed them?

thanks

[lexingtonsteel]

The fry are actually usually really good at surviving if they have places to hide (plants like java moss etc)
They'll eat ground up fish food and just pick and things here and there.
what type of mollies do u have?

[stonedaquarium]

just an assortment... got some sunset, got some blue moon, silver sailfin, black, neon, and mickey mouse i believe is what the petshop called it. what about you??

[pisces]

dont worry, do not need get the fry out! the parent wont eat them!
usually the fry will stay on bottom or hide it, after 2 ~3 day will swimming ! u can feed same pellet u have to feed , if u can just make little smaller the pellet for the fry , my wife have short body Black Balloon Molly ! before she get 8 female and 4 male only, after 4 months now i guess have over 80 ~ 90 now, i also every week will find some new fry in the bottom of my tank! i only add 2 Aquarium Driftwood of the bottom for they hide , and have some moss plant! easy take care!
she got all short body .... black / orange / silver and some mix too in 20 G !

[OKreefer]

personally if u want them all to live i would take the pregos out. if u want a few survivors just let them stay. the parents WILL eat the babies! babies are very good at hiding yes, but moms will hunt them down. i bought 2 female mollies, one had babies. my filter got most of them, moms got a few and now i think i have one baby left? hes fast but almost eaten on a daily basis. just my opinion tho.

[CanadianCowbell]

If there are lots of places for the babies to hide then some of them should survive. We ended up buying 2 pregnant mollies (didn't know they were pregnant till they gave birth) so I learned on the job. We already had a nursery hang on thing (purchased to deal with any aggressive fish in the short term) so once the babies were born I put all the babies I could catch in the nursery. As far as food I had a small container that I put some flakes in and I used the flat end of a chopstick to crush them up. Fed the babies a bit a few times a day till they were big enough to survive in the tank with the adults.

It did take me a couple of days to get all the babies though. They would go into the gravel to hide as well as hide in the many silk plants and under the wood we had in the tank. We also have a hob filter sponge over our water intake for our filter so the filter didn't get any of them. The sponge was added before the babies made their appearance cause we had lost a dwarf puffer to our water intake and didn't want to lose any more.

[stonedaquarium]

thanks for the advice guys much appreciated... well right now there seems to be places for them to hide... good thing i checked on the tank before rearranging some of the plants i was in the midst of deciding to change the layout of some stem plants that i had so when i saw two small fry swimming around the cabambas i just decided to let them be. i also have about 4 cardinal tetras that always seem to be hiding i hope that wont cause a problem for the fry.

[stonedaquarium]

hey guys just a quick question... one of my mother mollies died under some unknown reasons... hope you guys could help me out? could it be stress from the delivery?

[Luke78]

Hello,

How big an aquarium do you have? Are there any larger fish that might scare your cardinals? You should get a few more to bump up the numbers as they are a schooling fish.They will be a bit more active in larger numbers and it creates more activity in your setup.They will leave the fry alone and generally keep to themselves or stay amoungs other tetras if you have any or getting more.If you lost a mollie, i would run a few checks on your water pertimeters (Ammonia/Nitrite/Nitrate/GH-KH)

thanks for the advice guys much appreciated... well right now there seems to be places for them to hide... good thing i checked on the tank before rearranging some of the plants i was in the midst of deciding to change the layout of some stem plants that i had so when i saw two small fry swimming around the cabambas i just decided to let them be. i also have about 4 cardinal tetras that always seem to be hiding i hope that wont cause a problem for the fry.

[Slopster]

Remember Mollies Thrive in Brackish type waters, Not sure on the death but i have Black mollies and Lyretail and dalmation mollies in my community tank and as long as i can keep it in a brackish state and with a GH/KH of 6% happy happy fish all around.
The death of your fish i really don't think it would be from stress, check Nitrate/nitrite and Ammonia levels, no need to worry about PH.
any other fish in there that may be annoying those said fish??? keep an eye on that.

Other than that maybe it was just the fishes time was up???never know...

Keep on fishin..

Rob..