An Attempt At Mollies

So I have now dived into this hobby head first, and now am thinking about breeding. My wife loves the idea and chose livebearers, and thus Mollies. Now I want to make sure I am doing this 100% right for I care for anything living and do not want to harm anything.

Here it goes
First I have a 36g bowfront that I picked up for the community tank. In that tank I have
1 male black molly(had two but one was too aggressive and disturbing the tank harmony EDIT: I plan on getting another male soon),
2 female dalmation mollies,
2 female creamsicle lyretail mollies,
2 female silver mollies
3 panda corydoras
2Ghost shrimp
1 Pleco

Currently the tank is at 104% stocking, so I do a 30%WC every week and it is heated to 76 degrees and filterd by a marineland penguin 200 (50g)

One of my dalmations looks pregger (squared out belly and looking like a balloon. cant really see a gravid spot)
So I took her to my breeding tank (which has a substrate of smooth marbled rocks which is covered by alot of plants) to give birth.
My question is, does that sound ok? The breeding tank is a 10g tank that is heated to 76 degrees aswell, and is filtered by an aquatech 5-15 (15g)
I will post up pictures tonight to show a better explanation. I just would like to know if I am doing this right to where I will not be stressing out the fish as well as be successful.

take out the molly as soon as she gives birth otherwise she will eat them, or you can put her in a breeding trap.

guppybreeder1 said:

take out the molly as soon as she gives birth otherwise she will eat them, or you can put her in a breeding trap.

Click to expand...

Yeah I have been thinking about a breeding trap, but I heard they can really stress out the molly. That was why I covered the bottom with marbles and that covered by alot of plants. We are keeping a close eye on her, but with work and a 5month old it is a little hard. maybe a trap is the best? That or how long is a molly's labor? Will it go on long enough for us to catch it an move her back to the community tank when she is done?

fish tend to give birth at night, but keep an eye on her gravid spot if it get bigger and darker i would put her in the trap at night and maybe let her go in the morning. it is hard to tell the gravid spot with dalmation mollys. but acouple of years ago i bred mine succesfully

WOW! That looks exactly like the dalmation I have in question now!

cool

Welcome to our part of the forum PandaRye.
You may find the thread that discusses what I saw on my female molly helpful when looking at your females. I have a link to it in my signature area that I called My Molly's Progress and it is picture heavy to show what we mean by terms like squared off. The gravid spot is almost never visible as a colored area on a molly. They usually have too much skin coloring for the darker area to really show through.

This female dropped her fry the day after the picture was taken. The fry in the picture were from her previous drop. I simply left her alone in a 10 gallon tank to drop her fry twice. After that I had to move all 50+ of the fry to a 55 gallon tank so that they would have enough room to grow bigger.

HA! Well so my worries, questions, and concerns are all gone now. Apparently before I could get photos of eveything up....she decided to....ummm, well....drop! hehe Everything is a success. Still unsure of the count but I think its around 20!

Here are some pics, first one of mama pre labor and then a few of the fry I could get on camera.

Thats super! Do the frys have any colour? I have some Mollys front half gold/yellow back half black (dont know what type) and when the frys are born they already have colours. Its awsome. So are you going to be selling you fry? Well done on your first drop as a breeder. x

Mark the date in your notebook Panda. The next drop, with or without a male present is due in about 5 or 6 weeks. If you take pictures every couple of days like I did, you will have your own photographic record to draw on for judging your molly's progress.

Wow. That is well squared off.
Mine rarely get that square.
Mollies are great and very under rated. They are loads more active, fun and entertaining than quite a lot of specialist IMO.

Great post and pictures , i have only ever kept the normal black mollys out of all the mollys mainly because i love the velvety black colouration and have never had any problems with any of them eating their babys and never seem to want to attempt to eat them