Hello everyone. This is my first post, I just registered today. After years without a fishtank I finally got 2 - 20 gallon tanks set up last year. I tried a few different types of fish but between tank cycling and a bout with Iche my primary survivors were my mollies and my cory catfish. So I stuck with mollys which wasn't difficult considering how they breed as prolifically as guppies.
Anyway both my tanks are now full if not overflowing with mollys and I've sold a good number of the young to the local pet store for store credit. The store owner no longer makes me wait the 48 hours for my credit that she normally does (to make sure the fish survive) as the fish I give her always survive and she always comments how much she appreciates that I let the fish grow up a bit instead of bringing them in as young fry.
I've traded close to a hundred happy healthy mollys in just a year and have at least 50 in my two tanks currently (including about 20 fry). So I must be doing something right.
This past week I've added a balloon Platy to one of my tanks and just today a breeding pair of guppys to my other tank.
But the most fantastic story of either of my tanks is my free bonus guppy and her impossible offspring.
When purchasing a balloon molly (yeah I got a few of those too), the tiniest little guppy fry imaginable slipped into the bag, the store employee didn't even notice the thing was so small. I got a bonus fish, but I wasn't sure it was going to survive. I didn't even know it was a guppy fry until it started to grow and develop. It did and grew up to be the largest and plainest female guppy I've ever seen, nearly as big as my larger mollys and fat for a guppy.
Until this morning when I got my breeding guppy pair, this days old (at the time I got it about 6 months ago) fry was the only guppy I have ever owned and could not have been impregnated by anything other than a male molly (unless guppys can be born pregnant or impregnated as day old fry).
I have read about molly/guppy crossbreeds on other aquarium forums and from what I've read they are rare occurances, generally come from a male guppy impregnating a female molly, don't usually live to adulthood, and are almost always male and almost always fertile.
Well, I'm here to say that I have 4 golly/muppy fry in my tank that are approximately 4-5 weeks old, healthy, female (near as I can tell) and look like very plain little guppys.
I'm wondering if the mother isn't actually a golly/muppy herself as she's the largest and fattest guppy I have ever seen, as well as the plainest (even for a female). She's definately not a molly or at least a full breed molly, and neither are her four offspring. I might have only been at this a year, but with over 100 mollys having passed through my tanks, I know mollys.
I have silver molly fry born within days of these muppys, they are the same size and nearly the same shape as the muppys but the muppys are more transparent and have a clearly guppy looking fin, the molly fry's top fin is distinctly different, and the scales of the muppys are slightly larger and much more distinct, outlined more like a guppy's tend to be, not like a molly's scales.
While I didn't see these muppys being born and didn't have the guppy seperated from the pregnant mollies, I do know these odd little fish could not have come from a female molly as there was never a male guppy in this tank until today.
Also, for those who have seen molly and guppy fry develop, if you've ever noticed the eyes, guppy eyes are black and with less of the gold/silver ring around them, at least until they get older, they have a distinctly different look to them than the mollys do, when young. These four muppys, some have guppy lookin' eyes and some molly looking eyes, and one has one eye more like a guppy eye and one more like a molly eye. It could be that they are at that stage in their development where their eyes start to develop a larger outer ring. But either way, mollys eyes don't look different when they are young like guppys do.
Of the few muppy/golly pictures I've found on the web, most are colorful and interesting looking. I'd like to say my little freaks of nature were, but unfortunately they are incredibly plain looking. I got the breeding pair of guppys today in hopes that I could breed guppys as well as mollys, and that possibly the male could eventually breed with my female muppys (if it is even possible for them) and also that maybe I'd get some more and more colorful molly/guppy crosses in the future. I was thinking that even though most muppies are sterile, that possibly they would be more likely to breed with another molly or guppy, than with another muppy.
Anyone else here have any muppy/golly successes?
Well, I wasn't intending to make this post that long. I wanted to introduce myself and let you all know about my tanks, my muppys especially. I look forward to posting and reading on this site more in the future. And, one of these days when I'm not so lazy I'll even put up some pics of my muppys and their mommy for those of you with more expertise than myself to comment on, even though the fish themselves are brutally plain looking.
Anyway both my tanks are now full if not overflowing with mollys and I've sold a good number of the young to the local pet store for store credit. The store owner no longer makes me wait the 48 hours for my credit that she normally does (to make sure the fish survive) as the fish I give her always survive and she always comments how much she appreciates that I let the fish grow up a bit instead of bringing them in as young fry.
I've traded close to a hundred happy healthy mollys in just a year and have at least 50 in my two tanks currently (including about 20 fry). So I must be doing something right.
This past week I've added a balloon Platy to one of my tanks and just today a breeding pair of guppys to my other tank.
But the most fantastic story of either of my tanks is my free bonus guppy and her impossible offspring.
When purchasing a balloon molly (yeah I got a few of those too), the tiniest little guppy fry imaginable slipped into the bag, the store employee didn't even notice the thing was so small. I got a bonus fish, but I wasn't sure it was going to survive. I didn't even know it was a guppy fry until it started to grow and develop. It did and grew up to be the largest and plainest female guppy I've ever seen, nearly as big as my larger mollys and fat for a guppy.
Until this morning when I got my breeding guppy pair, this days old (at the time I got it about 6 months ago) fry was the only guppy I have ever owned and could not have been impregnated by anything other than a male molly (unless guppys can be born pregnant or impregnated as day old fry).
I have read about molly/guppy crossbreeds on other aquarium forums and from what I've read they are rare occurances, generally come from a male guppy impregnating a female molly, don't usually live to adulthood, and are almost always male and almost always fertile.
Well, I'm here to say that I have 4 golly/muppy fry in my tank that are approximately 4-5 weeks old, healthy, female (near as I can tell) and look like very plain little guppys.
I'm wondering if the mother isn't actually a golly/muppy herself as she's the largest and fattest guppy I have ever seen, as well as the plainest (even for a female). She's definately not a molly or at least a full breed molly, and neither are her four offspring. I might have only been at this a year, but with over 100 mollys having passed through my tanks, I know mollys.
I have silver molly fry born within days of these muppys, they are the same size and nearly the same shape as the muppys but the muppys are more transparent and have a clearly guppy looking fin, the molly fry's top fin is distinctly different, and the scales of the muppys are slightly larger and much more distinct, outlined more like a guppy's tend to be, not like a molly's scales.
While I didn't see these muppys being born and didn't have the guppy seperated from the pregnant mollies, I do know these odd little fish could not have come from a female molly as there was never a male guppy in this tank until today.
Also, for those who have seen molly and guppy fry develop, if you've ever noticed the eyes, guppy eyes are black and with less of the gold/silver ring around them, at least until they get older, they have a distinctly different look to them than the mollys do, when young. These four muppys, some have guppy lookin' eyes and some molly looking eyes, and one has one eye more like a guppy eye and one more like a molly eye. It could be that they are at that stage in their development where their eyes start to develop a larger outer ring. But either way, mollys eyes don't look different when they are young like guppys do.
Of the few muppy/golly pictures I've found on the web, most are colorful and interesting looking. I'd like to say my little freaks of nature were, but unfortunately they are incredibly plain looking. I got the breeding pair of guppys today in hopes that I could breed guppys as well as mollys, and that possibly the male could eventually breed with my female muppys (if it is even possible for them) and also that maybe I'd get some more and more colorful molly/guppy crosses in the future. I was thinking that even though most muppies are sterile, that possibly they would be more likely to breed with another molly or guppy, than with another muppy.
Anyone else here have any muppy/golly successes?
Well, I wasn't intending to make this post that long. I wanted to introduce myself and let you all know about my tanks, my muppys especially. I look forward to posting and reading on this site more in the future. And, one of these days when I'm not so lazy I'll even put up some pics of my muppys and their mommy for those of you with more expertise than myself to comment on, even though the fish themselves are brutally plain looking.
