How Long Can Livebearers Hang On?its Ok 1 Dropping Now :)

[melloumaw]

hi,
my dalmation molly gave birth over a month ago now,she is huge and chases the other molly away like before,im pressuming she is ready for dropping,but im going to leave her in the tank and let nature take its course.i have 3 guppy fry who are doing really well at 1 month old in the main tank,i have 4 female guppies all with sperm packets,i have noticed that after giving birth they have an orange pocket where the babies were,as they are ready again the black seems to drop further down again.big momma still hasnt had any fry and she should be on to her 2nd drop now,i have increased water changes and temp more live feed etc but still nothing,she still has a hump on her back and i feel it is because of the size of her,
does anyone know of anything else to help bring her on?
one more thing how do i sex sucking loach,im not sure if the pair i have are fighting or courting,they keep chasing each other then mirroring each others movements,they seem to be sucking onto one anothers backs and leaving temporary pink suction marks,is this normal?
thanks in advance
melanie

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

hi,
my dalmation molly gave birth over a month ago now,she is huge and chases the other molly away like before,im pressuming she is ready for dropping,but im going to leave her in the tank and let nature take its course.i have 3 guppy fry who are doing really well at 1 month old in the main tank,i have 4 female guppies all with sperm packets,i have noticed that after giving birth they have an orange pocket where the babies were,as they are ready again the black seems to drop further down again.big momma still hasnt had any fry and she should be on to her 2nd drop now,i have increased water changes and temp more live feed etc but still nothing,she still has a hump on her back and i feel it is because of the size of her,
does anyone know of anything else to help bring her on?
one more thing how do i sex sucking loach,im not sure if the pair i have are fighting or courting,they keep chasing each other then mirroring each others movements,they seem to be sucking onto one anothers backs and leaving temporary pink suction marks,is this normal?
thanks in advance
melanie

Stocking up on plants in the tank, feeding a varied diet (frozen daphinia, krill and TetrPro vegetable flakes are good) and doing regular water changes is the best way to create the ideal conditions for them to give birth in .
Sucking loaches or Chinese Algae Eaters as they are more commonly known are highly territorial and won't tolerate each other in the same tank, it is highly likely yours are making war rather than love. They will certainly kill each other if you leave them together for much longer in the tank, they have also been known to get agressive with all manner of other fish as they are mature too.

 

[melloumaw]

thanks for the reply,well looks like a new tank then have just been watching the fish to get photos and spotted a new guppy baby unfortunatley think its become fodder just gotta work out who the momma is
mel

 

[melloumaw]

well momma is my favourite guppy "little pretty" she has this phenomenon of changing her top fin from blue to yellow and she is my littlest female,at the moment she has had 10 i know a few will die,but what puzzles me is that some of the fry seem to fill up with air like a balloon then well...............POP,is it that they have taken too much air?does this happen with any elses guppy fry??

melanie
well she had 18 in total but only 5 have survived the night,i think 5 is a good number for her size i only had 3 live from her last time
thanks
melanie

 

[guppymommy]

I've never had any guppy fry "pop" before. Are you sure they are getting bloated from taking in air . . . or could it be something else? Maybe some sort of defect or something? Weird . . . I've never heard of it before.

Hopefully your 5 remaining fry will be alright. Best of luck! And did your molly drop her fry yet? If not, hopefully she will soon.

 

[melloumaw]

i think they could pop through already having liquifry in the breeder box,maybe i should wait a few hours to feed them!! only have 4 fry now,the molly had her 1st drop on 18th july 9 survived she ate alot,they are about an inch long now.she should be due any time about a week i think with her size,but i am new to this so it is all based on what i have read.but i think im getting the hang of it
thanks alot
melanie

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

i think they could pop through already having liquifry in the breeder box,maybe i should wait a few hours to feed them!! only have 4 fry now,the molly had her 1st drop on 18th july 9 survived she ate alot,they are about an inch long now.she should be due any time about a week i think with her size,but i am new to this so it is all based on what i have read.but i think im getting the hang of it
thanks alot
melanie

Most newborns won't eat the first day, they will still have their eggsacks attached to them afterall (if you look closely at newborn frys tummys, they look really fat and sometimes you can see an orange eggsack attached to it- this will provide them will enough nutrition in case they don't get anything to eat within the first couple of days of their life), you can try feeding them but it will probably just mess up the tank right now.
I generally give my fry a couple of drops of liquifry 8+ hrs after hatching to see if they want any (they are usually not interested), after that i feed them as normal (3-4 times a day on liquifry, dry powder fry foods and freezedried brinshrimp), particually when their eggsacks start going down and the fry become more active.

 

[melloumaw]

wow!
thank you.it appears that the ones who dont have the sac survive,compared with the the ones who die who all seem to have a yellowish bubble(sac) on them,thought it seemed a bit far fetched to explode,but as i say i am new
melanie

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

wow!
thank you.it appears that the ones who dont have the sac survive,compared with the the ones who die who all seem to have a yellowish bubble(sac) on them,thought it seemed a bit far fetched to explode,but as i say i am new
melanie

Glad to help ! The main thing to remember when it comes to feeding fry is to make sure if you feed liquifry, it is properly dispersed in the water and doesn't just plop to the bottom of the tank in a big lump- if you feed dried foods make sure they can be easily eaten by the fry and are not too big.
You can also crush up a bit of algae wafer into dust and feed it to the fry every now and then to give them a bit of veg in their diets as they grow, which they seem to enjoy a lot .

 

[melloumaw]

well the remaining 4 are all doing well,and have noticably grown already,
once again thank you for your help
melanie