Pregnant Balloon Molly

[N4T4SH45]

We have bought two female balloon mollies to keep our male one company. We have had the females for abot two weeks and it looks like one of them is pregnant as she has got quite big since we have had her.


The thing is we dont know when we should seperate her from the rest, whether she is pregnant and what to the baby balloon molly fry look like when born. )


Does anyone have a picture of a pregnant molly and baby fry?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Annastasia]

What were you going to seperate her too? If it is going to be a Breeder net or trap, I'd just skip it. She'll be better off giving birth in the tank. Breeder Nets and traps can sometimes really stress them out, and sometimes even cause them to abort or have birthing difficulties. However, if it is a small fry tank, that's a different story.

It's really hard to tell how far a Balloon is pregnant. Basically, you have to judge them against a male Balloon Molly, and see how much fatter they are. Once you've had them for a while, you'll see what they look like when they are close to giving birth. You can also mark on a calender when they last had fry, and go out about a month from there to determine when the next batch will be.

I don't have any pictures of Balloon Molly fry, but most Livebearer fry are described as "Rice grains with eyes". Maybe someone else will come along with pictures.

I wish you the best of luck with your mother and babies!

 

[N4T4SH45]

We were going to move her to a breeding tank, but we were really unsure as to whether we should as I have read so many times that it can stress them out. Maybe I will leave her where she is then.

We are off on holiday this saturday, but have someone popping in to keep an eye on them for us, so hopefully she will be ok.

 

[Notsofab]

One of our Molly's decided to drop her first load of fry whilst she was temporarily re-homed in a bowl as I did an emergency tank 95% water change. It was a little frantic in the bowl for a while with 3 Molly's and 7 fry in there.

When they were first born, I can only describe them as looking like tadpoles.

Eventually we decided that nature would have to take its course and the Molly's and fry went back into the main tank.

I'm pleased to say that 3 weeks on we still definately have 2 live fry in the tank ( maybe 3 - they are hard to find ), one white, one black - which after reading the description above I would concur that they do look like rice with eyes. Actually if they stay still for long enough, I can now actually see they're small tails and fins and they are beginning to resemble Molly's. ( ..... all this and I'm still struggling to cycle my tank !!!! ).

And it looks like Molly number 2 is fit to burst any day soon.

Anyhow, good luck with your fry.