The molly's preggy!!!

N

Nischint

Everyone's a critic
Dec 19, 2002
28
0
0
45
Bombay, India
www.jamlikethat.com
Ah, the joy that are livebearers!!

My black mollies have been sneaking around together a lot, and now the female is obviously pregnant, since her belly's gotten quite large. As of now, I don't want to stress her by chasing her around and netting, and then putting her in a bowl to give birth. So what I'm doing is, I have some PVC pipes, 3 of them about 2 inches long and 3 others about 4 inches long. I'm going to put it in the tank, and cover it with a bit of gravel. The opening is too small for my angels or goldfish to in, so that helps. The only problem is that my gouramis might be able to find the fry.

Any thougts on what I could do? Maybe have some cotton or sponge in the back in the pipes??
 
maybe you could try these baby hiders.

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I can't get these baby hiders, they aren't available in India. Or at least, not available at any LFS near my place.

Currently using PVC pipes with cotton stuffed in the bottom.

Any ideas??

BTW, my girl says that the female isn't pregnant. When I asked her how she could tell, she simply said, "Coz I'm a woman too." Now, I can't argue with that logic, but please do tell me, what are the other ways to know if my molly's pregnant??
 
If it's been with a male for more than five minutes, it's pregnant.
 
In the latter stages, she will be obviously huge, with a tummy that drops almost straight down below her 'chin'. Black mollies are hard, because you can't see the gravid spot that apparent in other live bearers. However, usually these fish are quite fecund, so it's likely she is pregnant.

If you can, try getting some floating plants with dangling roots, like water lettuce, or a floating vine style plant, like hornwort or anachris. IME, babier prefer hiding close to the surface, so floating things are better hiding places than anything on the bottom of the tank.
 
Faramir, you make them sound like they're horny all the time :D Not that I mind, hell, I'm all for it!!

Thanks OrionGirl, I think I'll get some floating plants, though I'm afraid that my gouramis might try and chomp down on them. I'll try and see if I can get anything artificial, like the baby hiders, but otherwise can ordinary sponge do the trick??

There's just one thing I wanna ask. Normally, sexing fish is extremely difficult. Like one LFS guy told me that in angels, the one with the straight top fin is male, while the one with a curved one is female. Now, I don't know if this is true.

Most LFS guys just pick out the fish, without looking for the sex of the fish. Is there any way I can tell which sex my mollies are? Otherwise, I plan to get some more mollies, perhaps different coloured ones, to see if crossbreeding gets them in whacked out colours ;)
 
females have fan like anal fins... males do not, the males anal fin is actualy his sex organ. and yes cross breading does give you cool culors but the "tru" color of the fry come out at about 6 months 9at least mine are 6 months and i have 2 dalimation ones (white with black spots) 1 silver one, and one that will be black or green. then i have a lot of new born fry
 
Looked into my tank this morning and there was a new arrival! I thought that my black Molly was getting quite chunky lately. The little fry likes to hang about the surface in among the long stem plants that grow horizontally along the surface. I don't know what to feed the single fry, so I ground the flake food fine with my fingers. My fish are not aggressive (see tank specs link below) but I will either put them in a 5G grow out or make a vented fry box out of an old HOB filter.

Any recommendations?
 
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