Male Molly Has No Interest In Breeding?

[filliesforgood]

I recently bought a male and female silver hifin molly, and another female that is just a silver molly. I've had them in my 26 gal tank for three days, and so far they are the only fish in my tank because I have just set it up cycled it for about a week. I'm really hoping to get some breeding action in my fish, but I haven't seen any! The only thing my male is interested in is food! If either of my females try to get near 'his' food, he'll chase them and it seems as if he's trying to nip their tails. Not only that, but now my females won't even approach food if he's around, so I have to take care to make sure some of the food sinks just so they can snatch some up before he tries to nip at them. It has gotten to the point that much of the time, one of my females is hiding in the plants or near the heater just to escape him. The other female loves to follow him around, however. Of course, they do have their occasional times when all of them are okay swimming together, but it's not very often.

I've done everything to encourage them to breed -- I've been feeding them a mixed diet with vegetables and algae, and of course flakes. I've also raised the temperature to 80F as many sites have suggested, and added salt. But, as I said before, the only thing my male wants is food! He only gets close to the females to chase them for a few inches, then he'll give up until they get near him again.

I'm not necessarily a beginner to fish, but I am a beginner to breeding, so all help will be appreciated!
Thanks

 

[the_lock_man]

Hi,

If he's only been in there a few days, then give the poor bloke a chance!

Also, the way I read your post (and apologies if I've misinterpreted) it appears that you just set up your tank, left it for a week and popped in the fish. If this is the case, then perhaps the male is suffering the effects of ammonia poisoning, as it seems to me unlikely that your filter is fully cycled - ie it has enough of both kinds of bacteria to deal with the ammonia produced by your fish.

You say that you're "not necessarily a beginner to fish", so again I apologise if I have misread your post.

 

[filliesforgood]

Oh, yes, I did forget to mention that I had both plants and snails in my tank while I was cycling it, so hopefully it cycled properly. I haven't actually managed to purchase a test kit yet, but I will definitely look into buying one about the end of this week. My fish aren't really having the whole chasing problem anymore, thank the lord, so I guess my male is just a little uninterested in breeding with his tankmates, or getting a chance to settle in. My fish have been very active and exploring all corners of the tank, so it seems they enjoy it! I'm going to look into buying more mollies soon to see if that changes the game a little. Thanks for the input!


EDIT: In the filter I used a cartridge from a previous tank, too, so it did have much of the beneficial bacteria to begin with.

 

[the_lock_man]

That's good, but can I please suggest that you check your water stats first with a test kit, before introducing more fish. Neither plants nor snails produce ammonia, which is what your filter bacteria need to survive. I'm just worried that if there's been no ammonia source for a week, you may not have any bacteria, mature media or not.

Did the mature media come from an active tank with fish currently in it?

 

[filliesforgood]

Oh, I just assumed that snails would produce waste. I thought they'd at least, you know, poop or something. I guess I was wrong! And yes, the filter media did come from an active tank, and so did the plants that were in there if that helps at all. I did do a 30% water change maybe two days ago and after that my fish seemed very active and much more agreeable with each other, so maybe there was something funny about the water. We'll have to find out when I get that test kit. I've done amateur fish keeping for 3 years without using any test kits and my fish have done surprisingly well, but we moved recently and the water is most likely different. I plan on only adding two or three fish next week and be done for awhile, anyway, because I need to concentrate on saving for my horse riding!

 

[the_lock_man]

To all intents and purposes, the only place the bacteria live is in the filter, the plants won't make a difference, as they absorp ammonia, not produce it. I hope some of the bacteria will have survived, but I fear that a week without ammonia will have killed the majority of them off.

I reiterate my previous suggestion - test the water first, before you add any more fish. The fact that your fish looked happier after a water change supports my fear that your filter is not cycled - they looked happier becuase you had just reduced the concentration of poison in their water. Please make a test kit your highest priority - until you know about your water statistics, you can't be sure what kind of environment you're placing the fish into.

The paper strip test kits are notoriously unreliable, so I would suggest you avoid them, even though they are much cheaper. Most people on this forum use the API Master kit, although I use the Hagen/Tetra one, as that was the one my LFS sold. If you don't feel you can justify the money on one of these, then single tests for ammonia and nitrite will suffice for the time being, although knowing your pH and nitrate levels will be helpful in the future.

Click here and read three articles
(1) What's Cycling
(2) The Nitrogen Cycle
(3) Fish-In Cycling

In the meantime, could you do me a favour, please, and do a 30% water change every day? When you get your test kit, post up the ammonia and nitrite readings - I warn you now, you may be advised to change an awful lot more than 30%!

 

[filliesforgood]

Ouch, I didn't realise I might actually have a very serious problem at hand Luckily I will be picking up a test kit tomorrow, so it won't be very long before I see what the condition of my water actually is! If my nitrate and ammonia levels do happen to be seriously high, should I also pick up liquid bacteria (API Stress Zyme) just as a precaution? It could come in handy later either way. I really hope I haven't been poisoning my fish all along; the transfer from pet shop to home tank was probably stressful enough.

I'll be sure to update on the forum tomorrow afternoon. Thanks for all the advice you've given! I would have probably dumped in another fish or two without thinking -- which probably would have been quite a bit of money down the drain in the end.

 

[the_lock_man]

Let's just hope that some of the bacteria survived. As a first thing, (and I don't know why I didn't suggest you do this last time) take some more media from your other active tank, and put it in the molly tank. The fish in that other tank will have been producing ammonia, and therefore there will be bacteria still alive. This will help your cycling process in the molly tank.

In theory, you can take up to a third of the media, but since it already lost some media a week or so ago, it would probably be sensible to take less than a third - perhaps something around a fifth? That should leave enough media to cope with the bioload of your existing fish in that other tank. Again theoretically, the bacteria colony in there will have had enough time to grow again to cope with the bioload, but I think erring on the side of caution is sensible - the last thing we want is problems in that other tank!

Many people on this forum are dismissive of the liquid bacteria products - certainly the one I used in my first tank (although not Stress Zyme) made no appreciable difference. API's website makes some impressive claims about Stress Zyme. The honest answer is that I don't know if it will help you. I don't see how bacteria can survive in a bottle - like any other life form, they need food (ie ammonia) and oxygen, and I don't see how they can have enough oxygen in a bottle and still have a shelf-life of more than a few days.

Did you read those articles I posted?

 

[filliesforgood]

Sorry that I haven't been able to respond! I've been very busy and haven't gotten the chance to do any freetime. I've been testing the water every day since I bought my kit (I did buy the cheap one, however, because the only other kit in stock was outrageously overpriced at about 40.00) and my water parameters have shown up just about perfect, except I suspect my pH is a little low for mollies, at about 8.5, and I understand that mollies like their water pretty hard. I may be stopping by my pet supplies store tomorrow (no guarantee though), and I'll definitely pick up aquarium salt. But in case I can't stop by tomorrow, would regular table salt be an okay quick fix? I'm sure my mollies won't perish with their slightly low pH, but I want their environment to be as comfortable as possible. I may mention though that we did have a power outage of +/- 18 hours last night because the power lines here are so weak in storms. The fish didn't seem to mind, though, and their water temp was pretty stable. ^-^

And, bringing up the issue that started this whole topic -- both of my females look like they're starting to grow a little bit of a belly, with one's growth of 'tummy' about 25% more than the other. They did look kinda skinny when I first got them, though, so maybe I've just got some false hope. I'll post some pictures tomorrow to verify, although they're super hard to photograph because they're so active.

 

[filliesforgood]

Agh, sorry for double post. My other post was so disarrayed already I felt I needed to post another.
As for the articles you asked for me to read, I've read probably at least 8 of each of those over my fishkeeping years (and some very recently) that sound extremely similar to the ones you suggested I read. As soon as I started to read the first, it sounded very familiar, so I do believe it may have been posted elsewhere, also. Given those facts, I decided not to read the articles, though I thank you very much for going out of your way to retrieve those for me! If there is something very important in them then I will have to find a time to sit down and read them, of which unfortunately I don't have. Thank you very much, anyway!

 

[the_lock_man]

Your welcome! I'm glad all the water stats are good.

A pH of 8.5 is pretty high for aquarium water - I live in an area where rainwater soaks through chalk into the water company's reservoirs, has lots of dissolved chalk in it, and my pH is about 7.8. In any case, most fish will not worry too much about pH, so long as it doesn't very greatly too quickly - in other words, trying to control the pH often causes more harm than good - just leave it. Your fish will be fine.

I've only ever kept Mollies in a community tank, so I never added salt. Perhaps someone else with more Mollie experience could jump in and help out on that one.

With decent water stats, there's nothing gonna stop your male from having his wicked way with the ladies - they'll be permanently pregnant from now on!

Good luck.

 

[filliesforgood]

Thank you so much! And, just to confirm one last thing -- I did buy 3 new fish today, but couldn't locate any aquarium salt whatsoever in the pet shop (only water clarifiers/ammonia dissolvers) to my dissapointment. And you're right -- I read a few weeks ago that 8 was pretty ideal so I guess I got 8 and 9 mixed up. *facepalm* So I'll do a couple of water changes with no salt added to see how that goes. I guess my water is pretty hard already, as I only added about 2.5 tablespoons of salt (regular table salt) to begin with.


I bought a gigantic black molly today, and to my surprise my sailfins are supposed to get about the same size as that one (I thought they'd only grow a little bit more) so maybe they're just not sexually mature, although I highly doubt it! My male has been chasing the new molly around today, even though she seems like she's definitely pregnant. From glancing at the 'Molly's Story" topic it seems like she's probably only a tiny bit into her pregnancy but I'd honestly have no clue. ^-^ She does this funny awkward swim where she kind of rocks from side to side, but it's probably because her belly is so huge. I do believe she or the other female in the store's tank (who also looked huge) dropped fry a little while ago as there were alot of them swimming around in a seperate tank.
I uploaded a few pictures of her. Her stomach actually is quite a bit bigger than what it appears to be in the pictures though.

 

[the_lock_man]

She certainly looks pregnant to me.

The rule of thumb with livebearers is male+female+water=pregnancy. They breed like there's no tomorrow. Enjoy!

 

[OldMan47]

Welcome to the forum Filliesforgood.
Your method of establishing a mature tank is not optimum but may well be helping some. As you surmised, snails do produce some ammonia with their biological processes so you have not killed off any beneficial bacteria in your sample of filter media.
If you used table salt to salt your tap water it probably did not affect the pH very much. That would seem to indicate that your tap water has plenty of mineral content for mollies to be healthy with no salt added. If you simply do your regular water changes with no salt added the salt concentration will slowly drop, which is what you will want now. I would not add any more fish to your tank until you get the chance to measure nitrites and ammonia levels. Some pet shops will measure your water chemistry for you at no charge.