Pregnant Dalmation Molly

Molly fry are not entirely safe with the adult females but if the female is well fed many of the fry survive. I average about 30 fry surviving in a tank that only contains a female and her own fry. Some of you may recognize this picture as one of my females with her own fry of less than 1 day old.


Any other fish in the tank certainly will add to the predation, which is why I separate a female when I want some fry.

my molly is still being stubborn and not displaying the typical not feeding and hiding routine.

Is there such a thing as a livebearer epidural lol?? (just getting impatient as this is my 1st batch of fry)

So I bet it will just be sods law that I may not get to see my first batch of fry but if that is the case they will all be well fed.... and I shall have to wait for molly 2 to drop in about 4-6 weeks.

Ignore the drop if you have established the right conditions. Fry simply will happen.

I'd say you don't have long to wait! She looks very square!! Definitely keep an eye out for fry!! You may also want to prepare and set up a breeding chamber or smaller tank, so when the fry come you're prepared.

I once had a dalmatian molly that gave birth to 36 fish!!!!!!
Good luck!!

I have a breeding trap which I hope she will give birth in then I have a mates tank to move them to when old enough to move as been told multiple times I am not allowed a 2nd tank or a new tank until I have had 6 months of the current one... But I will possibly see if I can swap it without being noticed too much.

here is another pic and she is still getting bigger!!



Also you can see clearly the birthing tube and that has been visible now for just over a week

In your picture I can see clearly a female that is at least a week from any drop Althamon. Your female is heavy but is not at all squared off. I would say that your female is well fed, which will help with fry survival when she finally does reach a stage to drop her fry.

Thanks, sounds like she may be giving birth when on holiday then... Do you reckon the fry may survive with a tetra 7 day holiday block providing they survive the mouths of the others?

I feed them twice a day, once between 7 and 10am and other between 5 and 8pm and they only get fed a well ground pinch of flake food.

The feeder blocks are not one of my favorite things. I have tried using them in the past but I came to the conclusion that fish will survive starvation for a couple of weeks and that is probably what explains the fish surviving a week with nobody home to feed them, not the feeder block. I left mine home with one of the advanced gel foods, not the calcium block type you are looking at, that was marked for over a week and found that all of the adult fish seemed just fine but there were no fry in any of my tanks. When I took an unused gel food container marked for use for a week or more and placed it into one of my tanks, it was gone in just over a day. My fish were living by eating fry is the only conclusion I could arrive at. I would like to be able to tell you your fry will do fine with no attention, but I seriously doubt it. The fry will find food in the tank, if they survive the predation, since they will feed on the microorganisms that occur naturally in any mature tank.
Watch your adult mollies for a few minutes and you will see that they spend a lot of time picking at the tank walls as if they didn't like something about those walls. What they are really doing is eating. Mollies are foraging type feeders that take advantage of the small amount of natural organic matter available to them on almost any surface. The microorganisms they are eating are a perfect first food for your fry but the fry first need to avoid predation. I would suggest you provide a dense cover of something like java moss or najas grass to let the fry avoid the adults and thus get the chance to feed on those microorganisms.

That explains why my molly's suck up the gravel and spit it out then, I also have some hair algae which my shrimp enjoy and that gets nibbled at too.

I will definitely look at getting some java moss or najas grass to give them a better chance.

Althamon said:

That explains why my molly's suck up the gravel and spit it out then, I also have some hair algae which my shrimp enjoy and that gets nibbled at too.

I will definitely look at getting some java moss or najas grass to give them a better chance.

Click to expand...

Just curious but any update on your molly? Has she dropped yet?

Not dropped yet as oldman was right as she is even more square now.

But on a sad note I got home from my hols an hour or two ago and found a zebra danio dead (thought an oto til i fished it out) and juicy bits munched and as it was white I assume it's been dead a couple of days too so I did a 50% change with filter clean and there is no clue as to what it died of as all the others are swimming happily and all water tests were good. I suspect the fighter gorged itself silly as his belly is fat so putting them on a diet of feeding every other day.

Oh wow I'm sorry to hear that. But at least it doesnt seem to have affected your mama fish any.

True, well the danios were in the tank from the start (fish in cycle) so may have had something from the beginning I will never know.

I am glad she didn't drop when I was out though, Molly 2 (havent thought of names yet) is about 3 weeks gone now and still going strong

Well thats excelent to hear about molly2! Maybe the fish that died hit a stroke of bad luck! I get thoes sometimes.. Kinda like right now my 60 gallon as caught the case of ick.. (again! ugh!) and ive lost 2 fish (one refused to eat so not sure how i could have done anything about that..) plus I lost a snal.. Just another bad fish week. And to top it off it's infested with baby snails! So I gotta do a super cleaning on them tonight.

Mind me asking for a pic of your mama fish so I can compare with your first pics? I'd love to see how much progress she has gotten.. I'm considering trying to breed them after I get enough expirence with guppies

I will post another when I get a chance and I suspect she couldn't go too much larger so I am going to be watching her for signs of being off her food, how is the guppy doing?

I am only guessing but I guess Molly 1 is 40+ days along as I got her 18th Feb (35 days today) and she had a large but not overfed look about her