Pregnant Molly Fighting...

[GinIAm]

My creamecicle molly its getting quite close to dropping (as far as I can tell from the molly sticky). She's become quite a witch! She is constantly attacking my fan tail goldfish (which its considerably larger than her). The aggression has only started in the last 2 days, but.has become.bad enough that the gold fish has begun to fight back, and I am worried she will get hurt.

Its it normal for a pregnant fish to become more aggressive as she gets closer to dropping? Should I.go ahead and pull her out and put her in the "delivery tank" I have set up for her? Our will that stress her more then the goldfish?

 

[pumpkinnose]

From what I've understood with livebreeder the female will get stressed from the unfamiliar and abort the pregnancy. But I've also read you can turn the lights out and give the female some food and this will help. If I were in this situation and wanted to try and keep the fry I would move the goldfish and maybe reintroduce it to the original tank after you remove the fry and then place the fry in the 2nd tank. Now im not saying I'm an expert and I have just gotten into livebreeders 3 weeks ago and waiting on my first drop of new fry. As far as mommy becoming agressive due to the pregnancy I wouldn't know about that either.

You can wait for others to comment that know more about mollies if you want and I wouldn't blame you.

 

[CMan]

i breed many livebearers, if its the first time the molly has been pregnant and ready to drop, ive known mine to get aggressive, erm other livebearers ive had have been agressive after 3-4 pregnancies.. some fish just seem to be very protective over they fry.. if it was my i'd move the gold fish into another tank.. if you move the molly you could stress her out too much and loose the fry.. hope this helps..

 

[OldMan47]

Welcome to our forum GinIAm.
I am afraid that I do not keep cold water fish like goldfish with tropicals like mollies. It is not too unusual for a female molly that is nearing a drop to try to push away all other fish, so I assume the same applies to cold water fish like you have in a goldfish. Mollies, in general, are often more aggressive than most common livebearers. It is not that they are aggressive compared to typical cichlids but that they are more aggressive than typical livebearers.
If you intend to have any fry survive, I suggest that you separate that heavy female molly from all other fish. That way the goldfish will be spared the aggression and the fry will have a good chance of surviving. A well fed female is very little threat to her fry and that would mean a high survival rate if they are kept separately.

 

[GinIAm]

Thanks so much! I think I will separate her out tomorrow. She's beginning to square off and hanging out at the bottom of the tank until she sees me. I don't think it will be much longer for her.