Help For My Very Pregnant Molly

MOLLYMOM

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Mar 29, 2004
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I've had my medium black molly in a birthing net for over two weeks. She's looked like she's been ready to pop for almost those whole two weeks. I bought her with another medium pregnant marble molly. The marble had her's less than a week after I brought her home. I knew the marble was fatter than the black one, but not that much.

The black molly spent the first week in the corner of my 55 gallon tank near the "bubbles". She never seemed to accustom herself to the tank. She now hides in a half barral decoration I put in the birthing net for the babies to hide after they were born. She seems to be eating ok.

I'm concerned as to why she hasn't birthed yet. I read just about everything I can find on the internet about pregnant mollies and know the gestation can very. This just seems to be taking a lot longer than I expected. Are my worries valid?

PS - My water chemical levels are in the ranges necessary to keep mollies and hardy community fish. I have approx 10 various fish and a pleco (sp?). Most are mollies.:confused:
 
Got to agree with "T.M." on this one. Every once in awhile my wife gets that "Let's have babies" look in her eyes, and its off to the fish store for the most pregnant looking molly we can find. In our experiance we have not found many still born in newly transplanted mollies but ours usually birth at night and mom probably gets to them before I do.
Keep her in the net with plenty of places for the fry to hide in, and they will come. Good luck.
 
Finally. Mom had her babies. There must be 30 fry. I've never had a batch this big. Most of the time I don't get home in time to keep mom from snacking and only end up with 8-10. I'm a bit surprized at the size of the fry as well. These seem a bit bigger than the others. O'well, I'm just so excited she had them.

Thanks for you posts and advise.
 
Congratulations, Molly Mama!

Looks like the completely deleted all my previous posts, so the earlier reference to "TM" looks kinda spastic, but oh well, here I am again (and again...and again...)

Feed those babies pulverized flake food, and if you have a plant with algae on it, put that in the net with them, they LOVE algae.

Also, now that you know when she had the babies, you can avoid keeping the Mom in the net for 2 weeks next time; the next batch of babies should be roughly 30 days.

Good luck!
 
Congratulations New Mom. I have been following your threads. I know nothing about breeding and fry so I couldn't respond but I am glad everything worked out.
 
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