Babies! Ok... Fry...

[Skyelah]

Hubby was doing a tank change on the 55 gallon on Saturday and spotted 2 tiny babies. He quickly got them into the net and then put them in a baggy and floated them until he got to the pet store and back to seperate them.

He bought a.... well, not really sure what it's called because he threw away the package... it's a clear plexi glass "cage" that allows water to cycle thru it that floats. We refer to it as the crib It has a small hole on the top to put food in there.I can see them nibbling on the food.

My question is... what do I do now?? They are eating and just swimming around in there.

I think they are mollies. Either the larger dalmation molly or the regular black plain ol' molly. I'm not 100% sure though.

Any suggestions???

I'm glad he saw them. I'm sure there were more but they had to become lunch for the other big guys in there!

 

[robryb]

congrats!

Well, not much you can do right now. You can keep them in there until they're big enough so that the other fish dont pose a threat to them. How long is up to you. If they have plenty of places to hide, then no probs.

Then you can either release them into the tank with the others, or perhaps sell them to a lfs if you're not keen on keeping them.

 

[Skyelah]

Thanks a bunch! I didn't know if there was anything else I needed to do!

I will keep them in there til they get bigger and then move them over to my 30 gallon. There are smaller and less threatening fish in that tank. The 55 has bala's,a brown ghost knife and a leporinus just to name the bigger guys.

Thanks again!

 

[OldMan47]

If you are fairly certain that you have molly fry, be careful about moving them to another tank. Mollies are great fish when it comes to adapting to local water conditions, as long as the water is fairly high in mineral content. If you move the fry to a tank that is fairly low in mineral content, they will not prosper. I tend to feed my mollies heavier in vegetable content food than a typical flake food has. That means buying food that has labels like spirulina flake, vegetarian flake or algae flake. The molly we keep in our tanks is largely a vegetarian but also benefits from some animal source protein in their diet. That means you will need at least two different foods that you can trade off for their feeding.

 

[frankie21]

You may want to identify your male and female mollies and separate them in different tanks unless you want to see a HUGE supply of babies coming your way. There will be so many babies it will drive you nuts because they can drop 20-30 no problem every month. Worst part is the females can carry sperm in them for 4-8 weeks and release fry long after males are removed.