Think My 2 Mollies May Be Pregnant .

So I'm a Very New fish Mommy, and I have Five Babies in all so Far, in my Twelve gallon tank. I believe my Dalmatian Mollie, and my Gold/Dalmatian, May be Pregnant, but I am New to this, I have no clue. Help? I am Prepared with a Breeding box, but I was wondering if I Should eventually get a Nursery tank or what to do in that area. Otherwise my tank is Nice, Temp is always anywhere from 74-78, small water changes are done. etc.

Mollies breed prolifically and if you save the babies each time, there will soon be a LOT of babies, hundreds. Thousands even! They are extremely fecund as in the wild few would survive. Do you have a plan for them all if you save them? The alternative is to leave them be, and let the ones who survive live on in the tank. However depending on the level of cover and hiding places you could still find yourself overstocked very quickly.

If you keep males only, this tends to be less of a problem

Forgive me for asking, you said you are very new to fish keeping. Did you cycle your tank before adding your fish? Just checking, your fish look happy and healthy but just in case you didn't cycle first there are measures you'll want to take to keep them healthy in the case that you are doing a fish in cycle.

I did not cycle, lol I had no clue about it until recently, I've had them for a week now, I have red up on it, and I have been doing things to cycle fast, they all are very happy and Healthy, they play a lot and they are active, What might help even more? advice please, lol also do my mollies Look to be pregnant? I will be prepared for babies, but Im not a fsh preggers expert. lol.

I've not got a good eye for mollies so someone else might need to chime in there.

Do you have a liquid test kit? You will need to be doing frequent water tests to maintain ammonia and nitrite at 0 and watch for nitrates to crawl to a stable level. If you have not cycled then your ammonia can quickly grow to harmful levels... thus you will want to test pretty much daily to see if you need to do water changes. Generally, in a fish-in cycle you will need to do a large water change daily for a few weeks.

Check out this section of the forum and take special note of the fish-in cycle portion. http/www.fishforums.net/index.php?/topic/277264-beginners-resource-center/

With a fish in cycle the ammonia can make your fish prone to weakness and thus illness, amongst other things like ammonia can damage them internally/permanently as well as damage their gills.

Yes, they are pregnant.

However, if they are born into an ammonia-ridden tank, they won't survive very long. I should listen to what Sunflower is trying to get you to listen to.

I for sure am, Everything is looking great, got my test strips, all test are right where they should be, and small water changes have been daily, they seem even more happy, plus I added a bubbler! and they are loving it,

Jessalyn said:

got my test strips, all test are right where they should be, and small water changes have been daily,

Click to expand...

Daily water changes are good. Test strips are BAD BAD BAD, they are notoriously inaccurate, especially for someone in a fish-in cycle situation - which you are. For instance, I know of some test strips that claim ammonia up to 0.5ppm is safe. Erm, NO. Anything above 0ppm is unsafe, 0.25ppm is OK as a maximum level, but 0.5ppm.

Seriously suggest you get a liquid test kit, most people on here use the API kit (although not me, funnily enough, I use the Salifert ones), it will give you a much more reliable view of what's going on in your aquarium.