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New Molly Colony! New adopted fish

I don't know how to do any of that though...lol! My photography hobbyist friend is coming down the night before the funeral, on the 19th, so will ask him to fix it for me and give me an idea of how it work in "photography for dummies" language! It's a nice camera, a Fujifilm X-T10. Dad would want me to keep using it and not let it go to waste. :) ❤️


@Sgooosh I'm an android kinda girl! Never owned an Apple product, have no intentions of owning one!
Update on the fish - the one that I didn't like the look of, had some swim bladder issue did pass away a couple of days after arrival, poor little dude.
But the rest are looking really good! Have spent a lot of time observing them and haven't seen anything to worry about. I'm undecided on whether to worm them while in QT, just in case. What do you think @Colin_T and @emeraldking ? Would you worm them just in case since I still have leftover (effective and in-date) worming meds, since they're store livebearers?

The fish originally came from Pets at Home I believe, and the very few times I've gone there, I haven't been impressed. The store here doesn't have a great fishkeeping department. The man clearly didn't know much about fishkeeping, they'd just set up a 70L tank and bought some pretty fish for the kid, then got a bit overwhelmed with numbers I think, so I doubt they've wormed them. Part of me doesn't want to put them through meds if there's no symptoms, but I'll also kick myself if I don't do it, and wind up with worms in my main tanks again...



I've usually managed to get better photos (I have before, just not recently!) by taking them at night, and making sure every other light source in the room but the tank light is off. With the sun beaming even through closed curtains, or have a lamp or ceiling light on, and you get more reflections off the front glass.


Very good point! Sometimes a tab stuck to the glass draws them out, but fish definitely do get pretty zoomy when there's food!

I'm Applephobic!


He does! A beautiful gold edge all along the dorsal. He's a handsome boy!


Does this mean mine are sailfins? The adults look like a marble (the male) and a fairly typical black molly female, although she does have some speckling too. She is a big girl, and sailfins are generally larger, aren't they? A friend thought my previous trio might be sailfin/black molly hybrids. I'm guessing there are lots of hybrids around? I do really like the wild traits! That Wild Sailfin and the Marble molly on the left in that chart are absolutely gorgeous.
Looks to me like the fry are going to turn out a mix of marbles and dalmations. I know it's too early to tell for sure, they can change colour a lot and these are only small and beginning to develop their colouration, but some of them have such an eye catching bright white main body colour developing some black speckles now, that I hope they turn out silver-ish dalmation molly.
i see, i think it's just that the natural light gets filtered many many times when it gets to the tank, and I have a finnex 247 so it automatically gets dimmer at night
 
It's certainly possible... I also keep wild molly species overhere. But the retail won't sell them.
I'm starting to connect more with other local fish nerds like us! The kind of people who make biotopes and keep more unusual species - or know someone else that does, so maybe I'll find a livebearer fan with wild type mollies here!
 
I'm starting to connect more with other local fish nerds like us! The kind of people who make biotopes and keep more unusual species - or know someone else that does, so maybe I'll find a livebearer fan with wild type mollies here!
I do know that multiple wild rare livebearer species are swimming in the UK that were purchased from me. The last couple of years (with the exception of the time period that we were dealing with COVID) a lot of british aquarists have purchased fish from me at the Vivarium (the largest vivaristic event of Western Europe). They were scared that when the Brexit would become a fact, that importing fish would be a lot more expensive. So, the British were the best buyers at that moment. And not just at my stand but also other exhibitors said the same thing.
 
They were scared that when the Brexit would become a fact, that importing fish would be a lot more expensive. So, the British were the best buyers at that moment. And not just at my stand but also other exhibitors said the same thing.

They were right... stores here were really struggling to get stock and facing rising costs, and is what put the nail in the coffin for my LFS and forced them to close down, at least partly because of Brexit and covid.
 
They were right... stores here were really struggling to get stock and facing rising costs, and is what put the nail in the coffin for my LFS and forced them to close down, at least partly because of Brexit and covid.
COVID has resulted in a lot of companies that had to shut down their business. Energy costs, rent, insurance and payroll had to continue while there was hardly till no production.
46981240_2053752984663352_3202796218304430080_n.jpg
These elder gentlemen from the UK came with a group back in 2018. They made reservations on fish beforehand. And they were also checking my styrofoam boxes behind the stand (I let them). And they purchased in a very enthusiastic way. The photo is by courtesy of the Vivarium. I'm allowed to used it.
 
COVID has resulted in a lot of companies that had to shut down their business. Energy costs, rent, insurance and payroll had to continue while there was hardly till no production.
View attachment 313063
These elder gentlemen from the UK came with a group back in 2018. They made reservations on fish beforehand. And they were also checking my styrofoam boxes behind the stand (I let them). And they purchased in a very enthusiastic way. The photo is by courtesy of the Vivarium. I'm allowed to used it.

I wish I could go to this event! Looks amazing. But also like I'd spend all my money!
 
I wish I could go to this event! Looks amazing. But also like I'd spend all my money!
You only have to cross the North sea to get there... The next edition will be in November this year and it's also the 15th anniversary of this event. If you really have the urge to get rid of all of your money... this is the place to be...
 
The mollies look amazing! I do not know what else to say about them except that I cannot express how envious I am of you for getting those little miracles. The guppies look nice too, but I think if you took a nice young female from the fry once she has reached maturity from the batch, and put it in with a nice red moscow, you can bring out a few clear characteristics from the general stian you already have to make a stunning strain.
 
The mollies look amazing! I do not know what else to say about them except that I cannot express how envious I am of you for getting those little miracles. The guppies look nice too, but I think if you took a nice young female from the fry once she has reached maturity from the batch, and put it in with a nice red moscow, you can bring out a few clear characteristics from the general stian you already have to make a stunning strain.

Noooo noooo! I bred guppies when I first got into the hobby, and it was fine when my LFS could take all my fry once old enough to sell, but they've closed down, and I don't have a privately owned LFS nearby anymore, so I don't want to be swamped with guppies again!
But evil, evil for tempting me! It would definitely be fun to see what babies she winds up producing. But homing the mollies plus my other tank set up plans is enough on my fish plate at the moment, honestly! If I had a fishroom with dozens of small tanks, it would be a serious temptation to do some line breeding for colours I like, such as the purples and blues.
 
Oof… I feel so stupid for not understanding. Anyway that is pretty cool nonetheless!
Oh no! I'm really sorry, I didn't mean to make you feel stupid! There's absolutely no reason to be, I was teasing! There's no way for to have known that, and part of me really does want to keep her and raise some guppy fry again! 😍 I do still love guppies, so I am tempted!
 
The mollies look amazing! I do not know what else to say about them except that I cannot express how envious I am of you for getting those little miracles. The guppies look nice too, but I think if you took a nice young female from the fry once she has reached maturity from the batch, and put it in with a nice red moscow, you can bring out a few clear characteristics from the general stian you already have to make a stunning strain.

Noooo noooo! I bred guppies when I first got into the hobby, and it was fine when my LFS could take all my fry once old enough to sell, but they've closed down, and I don't have a privately owned LFS nearby anymore, so I don't want to be swamped with guppies again!
But evil, evil for tempting me! It would definitely be fun to see what babies she winds up producing. But homing the mollies plus my other tank set up plans is enough on my fish plate at the moment, honestly! If I had a fishroom with dozens of small tanks, it would be a serious temptation to do some line breeding for colours I like, such as the purples and blues.

Oh no! I'm really sorry, I didn't mean to make you feel stupid! There's absolutely no reason to be, I was teasing! There's no way for to have known that, and part of me really does want to keep her and raise some guppy fry again! 😍 I do still love guppies, so I am tempted!

I spoke too soon! She didn't look heavily gravid, but the guppy female popped out 7-10 fry last night... lol!
 
Noooo noooo! I bred guppies when I first got into the hobby, and it was fine when my LFS could take all my fry once old enough to sell, but they've closed down, and I don't have a privately owned LFS nearby anymore, so I don't want to be swamped with guppies again!
But evil, evil for tempting me! It would definitely be fun to see what babies she winds up producing. But homing the mollies plus my other tank set up plans is enough on my fish plate at the moment, honestly! If I had a fishroom with dozens of small tanks, it would be a serious temptation to do some line breeding for colours I like, such as the purples and blues.
You can check nearby petco for donating fry, a recently refurbished one near us has started to take donations and sell them off cheaply.
good luck on the fish! :)
 
It won't hurt them to do so....

They're sailfins or at least sailfin hybrids. But nowadays breeding forms of sailfins are not pure Poecilia velifera or Poecilia latipinna anymore. But the sailfin phenotype will be more dominant present than the influence of another kind of molly when we're dealing with a hybrid sailfin.
Real black mollies have a shorter dorsal when it comes to males. The black sailfins are actually developed out of mottled wild specimens but the black blotches are dominant present. If cross those for a couple of generations, you'll get total black sailfins. The black molly that's derived from the Poecilia sphenops won't be found in the wild but speckled and mottles ones can be found. But black and very mottled sailfin specimens do occur in the wild.

This was the male in my previous, original trio, he did have a short dorsal! Bit of a stubby looking boy, haha. You can see most of the fry in these pics look like the parents, mottled black/silver/blue, but there is one jet black young male behind the big male in both pics... I kept that one because he was a pure jet black, and beautifully shaped.

I lost the last ones I had of this line in a tank crash though, I was so gutted to lose the last ones.
View attachment 313025View attachment 313026

I'm starting to connect more with other local fish nerds like us! The kind of people who make biotopes and keep more unusual species - or know someone else that does, so maybe I'll find a livebearer fan with wild type mollies here!

I do know that multiple wild rare livebearer species are swimming in the UK that were purchased from me. The last couple of years (with the exception of the time period that we were dealing with COVID) a lot of british aquarists have purchased fish from me at the Vivarium (the largest vivaristic event of Western Europe). They were scared that when the Brexit would become a fact, that importing fish would be a lot more expensive. So, the British were the best buyers at that moment. And not just at my stand but also other exhibitors said the same thing.

Related to all this, something exciting happened yesterday! New thread coming soon...!
 

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