Baby Mollies

[Matt A NC]

I keep a small 29 gallon fish tank. Last year I had loads of Guppies. I got bored with all the plain colored females and just a couple colorful males. I gave them away and have switched to Black Mollies. These are also live bearers, but the females are the same jet black that the males are.

I bought 2 Black Mollies from Walmart late last week. I picked out 2 females that were obviously about to pop.

1 died this week. The other was in a net breeder, but just didn't seem happy. I decided to let her out into the tank. She had her babies last night and this morning. I caught 18-20 of them and put them in the net breeder for safety.

Once she was finished with birthing you could tell how skinny she was. No wonder the other one died. I will be surprised if this one survives. She is eating good now and may recover.

That $2.11 walmart molly paid for herself in mass. All the males but 2 will be taken to the local pet store.

Matt

 

[snowydiamonds]

When those young ones are full grown and bearing, the adults will eat the newborns and limit themselves from over growing their space. It is good though to be kind to the females and not have too many males constantly chasing and stressing the population, which then creates health problems such as their all time favorite disease, ick. I had some nice mollies in a tanks next to the computer but then put a beta in with them, along with lots of fake plants, thinking that would decrease the predation of the beta to nil...wrong, the beta only left me w/two mollies, a male and female, luckily! Now that the beta is out of there, I have two babies growing...a whole whopping four mollies and three albino cory's in a twenty gallon LOL

Since I'm working so much now and have so many birds/coops, I've been switching over in the big tanks from cichlids to fancy goldfish which have about the same lifespan but aren't so specific in water parameters.