do livebearers birth all at once?

[momnatur]

I have a mollie who still looks pregnant, and I have a single fry. I don't know if Hot Lips is Philip J.'s mom. I'm wondering if mollies birth all their fry at once, or if they can do so over a period of time.

Andrea Z and the Z Zoo

 

[virangos]

from my experiance most of my mollies would deliver over the course of a few hours. I do remember reading that it could be a couple days,but I can't quote anyone on that

 

[Raithan Ellis]

Originally posted by Tando Murphy
If something starts protruding from her vent, (not a baby, but...don't know how to describe it...kind of a white lump), she may die before the babies come out. But her behavior will be very noticably different, shimmying, fins clamped shut, that kind of thing.

I have been trying to find more info on this exact thing, the white fluffy lump. About 8 days ago my last female black molly gave birth to 5 fry, the next day she would hide and shimmy while not coming to the front of the tank. Sometime during the 2nd day she began to expel about 2 or 3 of what looked like stillbirths, however they never detached from her vent. They have turned into a fluffy white biomass, somewhat translucent and gel-like, certainly not fungus but rather something internal internal being discharged. She no longer shows any signs of shimmying and all fry are healthy. Often she will come to the front of the tank, and seems to enjoy chasing the male all over the planted 10g. The mass does not seem to be detatching on it's own, nor rotting. Do I allow nature to take it's course, or is there something else I should do? The day I noticed it, I added small amounts of salt and meth blue and greenex to prevent infection and relax her during the shimmy phase. It seems to be some sort of sack for the fry, but I don't know much at all about livebearers aside from goodeids.

Any ideas? Is there a term or explination for what this is?

Sincerely,
Raithan O. Ellis