New Molly Colony! New adopted fish

[AdoraBelle Dearheart]

Have decided just to tell people here, maybe make a new thread once I have these guys... but I might be getting some mollies that are descendents of my original trio!

No matter if the golden color is effectively present or just a shine (when it's hit by light), it remains a wild trait.
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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.

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.
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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.

One of the fish nerd friends I've made is a guy I met through my LFS as it was closing down. So he knows the owners, and runs his own fish related business, Avonview Aquatics (and I recommend him! He knows his stuff) and he also takes in rescue fish. He'd seen the fish I brought in as well, kept some of my guppies for his own breeding line.

I gave probably a couple of hundred molly young to the store that were sold in this city, so there are bound to be fish that were bred from my original line floating around this city, and I've always had a hope that I might find some one day. Even the shop owner kept a few for a while to breed, because he liked the blue dappling too.

Well, Dave might have found some, and I'm overjoyed! He'd posted this photo in the facebook FB we're in on March 8th that I only saw yesterday, with the caption: "Fish rescue on the snowiest day of the year..."

And the shape of them, with the short dorsal fin like mine had, caught my eye @emeraldking

So I asked "Nice mollies - do they have any blue dappling? I'm still searching for offspring from the original line I bred from. A lot of their fry were sold through the shop."

And he said: "these are bred from the ones you originally brought into the shop. Two have the blue silver fleck through them

have sent you a pm"

He's convinced that they're from the same line, since he saw batches of the fish I'd brought in, and the photos in the quotes above, and because he said: "Yes I recognised the girl and her partner and her family and the fish tbh and mentioned to her that they came from you. I think they were actually in the shop at the time and came back a few days later."

It's a trio, two females and a male, he sent me a video where I could see two of them that are mostly black, but do have some speckling on them! He said I can have them, so really excited to get them and see them in person!

 

[AdoraBelle Dearheart]

I thought my new molly girl was looking pretty gravid, and I estimated the fry at about 6 weeks, so no surprise that she popped out another batch of fry last night!

 

[Sgooosh]

I thought my new molly girl was looking pretty gravid, and I estimated the fry at about 6 weeks, so no surprise that she popped out another batch of fry last night!

nice! how many fry?
Sometimes they can give birth more than once
edit: I mean that they can drop multiple smaller batches of fry

 

[AdoraBelle Dearheart]

nice! how many fry?
Sometimes they can give birth more than once
edit: I mean that they can drop multiple smaller batches of fry

No way for me to get a headcount really! Not until I catch them up to move them from QT, but they're QT in a 36g, there's roughly 30 in the older batch, and I saw maybe half that as an estimate of the new fry! But she's a very big female who can likely birth a lot of fry, plus had 30 odd before, so I wouldn't be at all surprised if she isn't finished dropping them yet!

It's only a small thing, but with the funeral tomorrow, any reminder of life moving forward is a little bit comforting.

 

[AdoraBelle Dearheart]

Just did another rough head count, @Sgooosh and @corylover5 , I counted at least 32, and who knows whether she's finished yet?


Between the previous 30 odd and now this batch, I'm going to have a lot of mollies to grow on and find homes for! Oh, and the 7-10 guppy fry in the other tank...
@emeraldking !

 

[AdoraBelle Dearheart]

I haven't got my "new" trio of black mollies that seem to be descended from my original trio yet, my friend and I said we'd arrange it for after the funeral, but I know he's taking good care of them in the meantime.

But I did visit a fish shop and get six purple emperor tetra yesterday, and four more male guppies...! Going to use photos from google images to show the kind, since they're in a QT with a dim light and tannin stained water right now, so impossible to get a decent shot of their colouration, but these photos show pretty clearly what they look like!

Male Purple Emperor Tetra are stunning when they're in breeding condition, hoping to get mine there!

And the guppies. Got a gorgeous full red male:

Two koi males, because I've always liked this colouring, and I kept coming back to that tank.

And a fully black male. Kinda wishing I'd got two of these guys! They barely showed up at all in the store tank, but I knew they'd look gorgeous in a planted tank.

I'm making plans today for the long term set ups once all these new fish have been through QT and worming, and I can juggle the tanks and fish around. Watch this space!