Male Balloon Molly

[Becca]

Help! Forewarning y'all now, this is going to be a long post, but that's only because I'm stumped and I want to make sure you all have as much information as I have.

Two weeks ago, I added a few fish, including 2 Female and 1 Male Balloon Mollies. I believe these fish are at most 4-5 months old, they're still rather small and the females have NO interest in mating with the adult male sailfin just yet. They're more interested in swimming in and around the plants, caves and eating anything that gets in their way. Sounds like the normal life of an untroubled Molly, hey?

Well, that would be true if it were the case for all 3 Balloons, but it's not. The male seems to be stressed about something and I just can't figure out what. He doesn't show any signs of illness or injury (though I have noticed his extremely long dorsal fin has a slight tear towards the back.) He mostly hides out in caves sitting directly on the gravel and breathing harder than my other fish. Other times, he can be found at the canopy of the tank, hiding either behind the filter or heater. He does take interest in food and will venture out into the open long enough to grab a bite or two to eat, then head back.

At first I was worried about mouth fungus because I noticed the first bit of food he grabbed, he spit out almost immediately, but then I realized that he had attempted to swallow an entire large chunk of flake and he's yet to spit his food out again. *shrug*

Last night was the final straw for me. I stopped by to do a routine check on my female sailfin (I believe she's pregnant and trying to figure out how far along she is...) and I noticed...underneath the bottom branch of one of my plastic plants...sat a very still...MALE BALLOON. He almost appeared to NOT be breathing. At all. I thought "Great, dead fish...". I grabbed my skimmer and went to free his carcas from the plant and as soon as the skimmer got close to him ZOOM he was gone. And very much alive. And very much filled with energy.

Because the past couple of weeks he hasn't come around nearly as much as his other tankmates, I decided to isolate him in a Isolation container. (I don't have a seperate tank for isolation yet, working on that one...) I put him in there a few hours before I left for work this morning and he's been fine ever since. I've put food in his container, he's ate up every scrap of it and hasn't seemed frantic to try and get out of the container. He just slowly swims back and forth, or rests in the corner. In fact, he seems rather happy... (?)

I'm hoping by keeping him in the container I can observe him closer and see if there's something that triggers the stress. What I'm most worried about is bullying. There's only one fish in the tank that acts as a bully - my Male Sailfin. He's kind of pushy when it comes to any Molly in the tank. (And I have 4 Females!!) But, the weird thing is - I haven't really seem him chasing the Male Balloon lately.

I haven't a clue where to go with this from here. I checked my water quality (well, actually 2 of my 3 LFS did it for me, and both came back and said that the readings were excellent.) None of my other fish appear stressed. Does anyone have any ideas how I can find out what's bothering the little fella, and perhaps some ideas to help make him feel a bit better and adapt to my tank more?

 

[tstenback]

Male mollies that are established in a tank are well Known for beeing aggressive toward new males. The dominant male only had to assert himself once on the new male and that is usually enough to make them run and hide. As they are already stressed from the shipping and new tank the aggression from another fish is enough to send the new fish into seclusion. I have seen this before and on several occassions took the bully out of the tank for a day and that gave the new guy a chance to get comfortable. One time when i put the bully back in everything was fine or at least they tolerated each other but the other times there was still a problem although not as severe, the new fish would just swim away and go about his business in another area of the tank. HTH

 

[Becca]

Terry - as always, thanks again for your words of wisdom.

I hadn't thought to isolate the male horn-fish. (I bet the ladies could do with a day without being molested, hey? ) WHen I get home tonight I'll switch the two. Let the baby Male Balloon have free roam and lock up the Male Sailfin. If he asks what his crime is, I'll tell him it's a class action lawsuit for being too Nippy. Get it? Nippy.

Yeah. it sucked. I'm just in one of those moods where my humor is lame. But it made ya groan, huh?

Ok, I'm shutting up now! (Seriously, thanks. I'll let ya know how it worked out.)

 

[Becca]

Ok, I'm stumped. And to be quit honest, a little depressed. I've literally fallen for Mollies - the whole lot of them, with my favorites being Balloons and Lycretail.

My male Balloon doesn't seem to be getting on too well. Taking Terry's advice above, I attempted to isolate the male Sailfin and release the Male balloon. Since I knew that the male sailfin probably needed a couple more females, I picked up two female Lycretail from the LFS today and released them. I couldn't catch the male sailfin, so I thought that the ratio I now had would be enough to keep him away from the Balloon. My previoius thoughts were that he was being picked on by just the Male Sailfin due to lack of females open for mating.

But, as I said, I couldn't catch teh sailfin, so I left well enough alone and released the Balloon opting, instead, to keep my eyes glued to the tank to see exactly what was going on. To my suprise, while the male sailfin is partially responsible, it's nto just him. Every other fish in my tank, except for my Cories and Pleco, are stressing the poor guy out. They're not just chasing him, they're literally nipping at his fins. Other than my pregnant molly, there is no other fin nipping amongst any of the other fish. (My Pregnant fish tends to be a bit territorial at the moment, for obvious reasons)

So, I put him back in isolation - just a little plastic breeding trap that hangs onto the side of the tank. It's all I can afford at the moment. He's healthy enough - his appetite is great, he's in great spirits and there are no signs of illness. Quite honestly, he seems to like the breeder container better than the tank. Probably because he's not getting picked on and nipped at.

My question is what do I do from here? I'd like the guy to get bigger and be able to defend himself. Right now he's all of maybe an inch and a half - at most (which is the same size as my other balloons, who get along just fine)...and he's probably one of my favorite fish, I hate to part with him. But - if it means he'll have a better chance of survival elsewhere, then I know what has to be done.

Thoughts, tips and any advice would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Becca]

If anyone's been following this, I thought about this some and decided that if my little guy was getting picked on as much as he was, the best option for him might be to take him back. I took him and the other 2 Balloons to an LFS today and traded them in for 4 Guppies.