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Gouramis are your problem. With just mollies and the neons, the fry would be pretty safe already. These fry were raised with their mother from day 1. This picture was taken on day 35.

Ich is easily identified and known in the UK as white spot because that is the most common symptom. The fish will have white spots on its skin about the size of grains of salt. The disease is easily cured using a salt treatment or any of the malachite green treatments. Since the parasite lives...

Mollies in an adequate tank can readily grow to 3 or 4 inches but the genetic variation will sometimes mean 2 inches maximum. Most other livebearers will thrive in the asme water as the mollies. Once you have 6 or more of a species, the 2:1 ratio becomes less important since there will be...

Examine her closely. Flicking like that often rtakes place when a fish has skin isues such as ich or a fungus.

Forget the nitrate issue. You have a new tank that requires its own cycle. You do not have a molly problem, you have a cycle problem. Mollies, in general, are tough as nails fish. If your water is even close to acceptable, they will thrive. What you have is water that is not really good enough...

Be careful jamorel. Your link may be taken by the MODs here as less than acceptable.

Yes, I am retiring as a MOD here on TFF. I have greatly enjoyed my time here as a MOD and wish that I did not find it necessary to retire. I have joined another forum where I am quite active and I am also building my own "dream home". As you may well imagine, just the building effort takes up a...

A change in color of the gravid spot means absolutely nothing. Sorry folks but the obsession about gravid spot colors is a relic of an earlier era when people had no idea how to judge a female's state. Try simply judging your female's state by her shape. You will be right far more often than...

Rich_77, if your male is swimming at maybe a 45 degree angle to the female and is positioning himself so that she will get a good view of him, he is doing exactly what can be expected to result in the female being receptive to him. It is not a problem unless you don't want them to breed. That...

Gman45, your link points to some place on your hard drive. You need to upload your picture to a place like photobucket, it is free, and then link to it from here. I use this picture as an example. It is a picture of a harbor seal pup that I took a few years back when I was at the beach in...

Uneaten food should be removed daily. To do that, use a nice piece of air line tubing as a siphon and just suck up the uneaten food. If you fail to properly maintain your fry habitat, you will lose many of the fry.

Keep an eye on those mollies. Usually mollies are good members of a community tank but some of them are poor members of such a group. Once in a while mollies are not the peaceful members of a community tank that we think they are.

I have yet to find a common fish that did not respond to mosquito larvae by eating them. I used to feed them to my bettas and swordtails but when I tried it with other fish also present, those other fish had their fill of them too. With the possible exception of purely vegetarian fish, fish love...

Guppies are all Poecilia reticulata and will not pay any attention to the line breeding that commercial breeders have done. The different lines of guppies at that out of town location just reflects color or tail shape choices made by breeders, not some separate species. It is like someone bred...

To me, she looks well fed. Please try to take a picture from the side so that we can judge her shape. Size or gravid spot color is almost meaningless to most of us.

I find that LFS guppies, which are often sold at around 3/4 of adult size, can in no way compare to my own guppies or swordtails. Good food and good water changes will always make your own fish better than any local fish shop can buy commercially. No commercial breeder can take the time and...

Welcome to our site GinIAm. It sounds like you have been misled to believe that the color of a gravid spot has some meaning. I am sorry to need to tell you that it is completely irrelevant in my experience. Shape is a far better predictor of fry than any color change at all. Since you have a...

Where the heck are you located? I live in central Illinois in the US and could ship for a few hundred miles, but no more, if I had something to offer to you. If you are in the UK, as many of the members here are, there is no way I could ever ship anything and expect it to arrive alive to you...

I have had fish that lost an eye. In my case it was an angel. What I found is that the fish swam a bit strangely, since angels orient to the sun as a vertical position but otherwise they did just fine.

GG1, your platy is really a molly and is not very far along at all. Your guppy is no more than 2 weeks of 4 along. Stop trying to judge fish by the color of the gravid spot. It is the most misleading factor that I have ever tried to use. Yes, when I was new at this I did try to use it. These...

There is no problem at all with "inbreeding". It is a must if you want to develop a better show fish. the problem will arise if you fail to cull any defectives from your stock. No method but inbreeding has proven as successful when it comes to removing undesirable traits from a line. If you are...

At 25C, you have your fish about as warm as I ever keep a livebearer. I keep my guppies at about 21C for more robust and stronger growth, but a bit slower than at 25C. Your fish are not adapting to lower temperatures as such, they are trying hard not to feel too hot. At higher temperatures, like...

Have a look at the pinned topic on sex determination. I think all of your posted pictures are of females but that pined topic is intended to help you decide for yourself. Even more important is that it will help you make the right choices at the LFS. You can reach the pinned topic from a link in...

Justeco, I find the references that you listed as a poor representation of available platies. Each one seems to have a good variety of "pet shop" varieties of platies but none of them lists the real species of platy that are available. There are over 15 different species that go under the...

If you live in Illinois, you can probably do well by finding fish at 2 different auctions. I attend plenty of auctions held by TCTFS in Peoria. You can find their information here. Another alternative is my own club in Champaign. You can find our club auction information here. Another option...

The breeding tank that hangs on the back of a main tank is not at all like the kind of trap the we often hang inside a tank. It tends to be much larger and thus is a better home for a female than a typical breeding trap. The real question that I have is about your 2 litre breeding tank. Does it...

All of those fish are loosely related but the subgroup we call Xiphophorus, which includes swordtails and platies are not close enough to the rest to cross with them but can cross with each other. Endlers and guppies cross way too easily with each other and so we try to keep them in separate...

Banning, the simple process of restricting all access, is one that any MOD can do. We simply mark you as a spammer and nothing that you post comes through after that. A selective restriction of posting rights is much harder to do and requires active involvement by either a MOD or an Admin...

You are in the area of fancy platies. No matter what anyone else tells you, you need to continue to look at your fish that way. I am not and never have been a specialist in the keeping of special hybrids like yours. I will go further and say that nobody here is such a fish keeper. Let me...

It is simple KayZ. Adult guppies almost always will ignore most new fry if, and only if, they have plenty to eat aside from those fry. I overfeed, to the point of being ridiculous, this tank. The end result is plenty of fry that survive to grow bigger. I sell my surplus fry every few months by...

OK it is time for my opinion. I think you have a very nice looking guppy. It may have a bit of endler in its background but is better characterized as a guppy. You are seeing some of the color variations of an endler but fin shape and such point in a different direction. My guess is that your...

When you see no progress in a fish's drop, it is time to consider the possibility that she is done. Even though a heavy female often means a large drop, it is by no means a guarantee. Once the drop slows or stops, you need to consider it over. Most poeciliids, especially the common ones, do...

You may well find that you have females that are carrying fry. Unlike most of the common livebearers they drop their fry 1 or 2 per day for several days before they are done with a drop. Do feed them a high protein diet that includes some live foods. In the wild they live on insect larvae so the...

I did a quick in my head calculation and I think you have about a 10 gallon tank. To me that means that you need at least a 10 watts and maybe a bit bigger fluorescent tube as lighting, even for low light plants. Have you thought about the spiral type tubes being offered today?

Empty the darned filter when you clean it. No filter will dry out so fast that you can't get it back together before things are truly dry. I clean my filters by first dumping the contents of the filter down the drain and then addressing each active section of the filter. It may take 10 to 15...

A tiny 24 inch long tank does not need any 2x4 lumber. I built a stand for a 5 foot long tank about 3 years ago using nothing more than 1x6 lumber. Even that was overkill but i wanted at least the 6 inch nominal to make draining the lower tank easier. Check out my stand thread that you can reach...

Mitch, the only bad question is one that you fail to ask. As long as you have a question, just ask it. If you don't ask, some day we will be discussing things in the tropical emergencies section instead. I think it is far better to answer things here instead.

Do not try to use the typical sponge from your local grocery, it will not work. A filter sponge has an open cell structure to it, it is terrible at holding water. A typical grocery store sponge holds water very well with its closed cell construction. These are not at all interchangeable. You...

Dan, I would probably go with shallower and narrower tanks than you have. Most fish only have a critical dimension in the length. A full foot of height or width would be plenty in most cases. I hope this helps you choose a size.

You are looking at breeder tank proportions rather than show tank proportions. I always have favored a breeder type configuration because it gives more fish support than a show tank of the same volume.