Baby Mollys....what to do

txgurl19 · New member Joined: 24 Jul 2006 Posts: 16 Location: Texas

ok so I have a white female, a black female, and a orange female that are all mollys. I also have a white male molly. My black molly was the first to have babies. Then my orange molly had babies and only 4 survived. The others were stillborn. Now my black molly is pregnant AGIAN!! What am I going to do with all these babies??? Any suggestions will help...

gravity · Posted: Thu Aug 03, 2006 1:35 pm Post subject:

You've got a couple of options...

Hope they will get eaten by the fish you already have.

If the parents don't eat them you can go out and buy a fish that will, like a female betta.

Find a petstore that takes the babies for you.

Find someone who has cichlids and wants some feeder fish.

Some people are horrified by the idea of feeding baby fish to other fish, but that's how nature works. That's also the reason mollies and platies have so many babies. Your tank will eventually be overrun if you don't do something about it.

txgurl19 · New member Joined: 24 Jul 2006 Posts: 16 Location: Texas

So the pet store just takes the fish from me??? And the fact that they will sell them to be eaten....uh no....thats just cruel

t_chelle16 · Moderator Joined: 22 Mar 2004 Posts: 3437

Gravity pretty much covered all the options (besides getting a bigger tank and even that will only be a temporary solution if they continue breeding - which they will unless you separate the males from females).

Also, not all LFS's will take them. Mollies are incredibly easy to breed so there's not a huge demand for them.

-Chelle

gravity · Posted: Fri Aug 04, 2006 1:48 am Post subject:

Your reaction to it was kind of what I expected, unfortunately. But I don't think you're approaching your tank the right way. You need to look at it as an ecosystem that you're responsible for. Too many babies is a big problem, and the solutions to that problem are not always ideal. It's kinda like the explosion of the deer populations when wolves were hunted to the verge of extinction.

Baby fish, aka fry, are a natural part of the diet of almost every fish on the planet. Some species of fish are even specialized in eating fry. Fish that have lots and lots of fry, like mollies, do so because the loss of those fry is pretty much expected as it's a natural occurrence. If you tried to keep all the babies, eventually your water quality would dip so low that ALL your fish would suffer.

I think your best bet is to go out and get a female betta and let her maintain your aquarium population. The only way I can think of to try to unload your babies is to give them away at craigslist.org or something of that nature.

txgurl19 · New member Joined: 24 Jul 2006 Posts: 16 Location: Texas

I put the bigger babies in the tank with the other fish and they are so cute! They are schooling and everything!