Anyone know much about balloon mollies?

I agree with Lupin, they are a defective strain of molly - they are NOT genetically engineered. Many types of fish - tetras and parrot fish especially, are tattooed and dyed, it is not a practice particular to balloon mollies. Balloon mollies are a product of selective breeding and while they are prone to swim bladder disease, you can prevent this to a certain extent by including veggies in their diet and pre-soaking their food. This also might help with breeding.
They are an excellent choice to keep with mollies as they are closey related and like the same water conditions. I have had three for two years now with zero problems, and they are great fish - a lot of fun to watch, big personalities, and everyone who sees my tank notices them first.
Last, many, many fish commonly kept are the result of selective breeding based on defects/mutations - the expensive strains of bettas, fancy guppies, lyre tail mollies and sword tails to name a few. There is always a trade off - most don't have the life expectancy or the hardiness of their wild caught cousins.
By the way - balloon mollies are totally cute. My fav by far. Treat them right and they'll have a very happy life - and a planted 55g sounds great!
 
Thankyou so much for your input. They sure do have some personality.I will take good care of them. My guppies seem to not be bothered at all. I really needed some new life in this tank. I fought a huge battle of columnaris months ago. My one guppy mother was the last survivor.She had a couple sets of babies and is now on her last leg.
 
Hi There,

I'm a bit of a balloon mollie fan I have to say. As mentioned, they really have a lot of personality! Generally had a male and female pair (partly in the hope that they might breed at some point)

Sadly we just lost the female the other day so we decided to replace her with another, which brings me to the question - when we put the new one in, our male (Malcolm Mollie) went a little crazy and wouldn't leave her alone, plus he kept putting his fins right up which we hadn't seen him do so much before.

So we were wondering if that might be a "hey, look at my fancy fins, why don't you breed with me??" kind of thing - or if it might have been a "Hey there's only room in this tank for one mollie dammit!"... more threatening kinda thing?

If anyone's got any thoughts on it that'd be much appreciated.

Thanks!
 
I bet he was showing off...hahahha..My big female has been chasing one of my males.She seems so bossy. They can swim faster than i thought. I was wondering if anyone has ever had baby ones born in their tank. I bet they are so cute when tiny. I've never seen them for sale when tiny. One of the employees at Jack's Pet's told me last year when I was looking at them that they have a hard time breeding.
 
i have had them breed lots of times, the interesting thing is that not all the babies will be balloon! i would only have bout 1 ballon baby out of 10.
 
Wow that's interesting ..one out of 10 born a balloon!!! Well as for pics , I lost my digital camera in Mexico. I have a camera phone but not sure how to download pics to this site.
 
hmmm.... photos. That seems like an entertaining diversion for this evening. I'll see what I can snap! :)

With the breeding - it's interesting, I'd actually heard that they were relatively easy breeders although I have read a fair few articles (or forum posts) which have commented on the difficulties that they can experience during pregnancy or birth (quite a few things about premature birth or complications which lead to the death of the mollie.)

From what I've read it looks like some of the tips are

1. Always have more females than males as the male will want to continually try and breed, ie: they'll chase the female around the whole time leading to stress for her.

2. A few bushy plants are good so that she can hide and chill out

3. A breeding net of sorts is a must as other fish, including the parent mollies will eat the fry.

4. Remove the mother mollie from the net after birth (for the same reason.)

5. Mollies are live breeders so if she lays 'eggs', it's likely that she's given birth prematurely.

This is just my list cobbled together from what I've read - bearing in mind I'm a total novice, I'd love for someone more to knowledgeable to add or edit it. We're quite keen to see our mollies breed (even though it seems we've ignored point 1 and only have a pair.... we'll have to rectify that shortly :) ) so I'd love to have a good, clear set of guidelines.

Thanks!
Cam
 
I have two darling balloon mollies! Phinnegan and Dot- I love them! I also have a black molly and a gold dust molly- They all mate with each other- it doesn't matter- Dot the balloon, had regular molly babies- and they are very pretty-
you do have to watch when you feed them- Mine had some swim bladder issues because they would gulp so much air feeding on the flakes from the top- it was pretty strange coming down stairs and finding my fish vertical- tails down and mouths straight up- I kept the lights off, fasted them for 2 days, and they recovered fully. Now I drop the flakes in below the surface when I feed and we haven't had a problem since.(I've had them almost 4 months.)They have been great additions to my tank!
janet
 
I have had 3 balloon mollies for about a month now - a male and 2 females. The male (Hot Fire) just hangs out with one of the females (Love), but chases the other (Mermaid) relentlessly. She hides out behind the bubble curtain or under the plants. How do I know when one is pregnant to put in a breeding net? I've never had fish with babies, but I would love to. I also have a few neons in the tank, a cory and a botia - but they will be moving out as soon as my 55 is fully cycled.
 
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