Babies Already - Aaaargh!

[popski]

Hi all,

New to the forum so hope someone can help!

Set up an aquarium a few weeks ago, spent ages reading up on everything, got everything just so, and was very excited to be able to go and get my first fish at the weekend. After much discussion with the staff at the aquatic centre we settled on a pair of mollies, although were warned that we could expect to see babies at some point.

Now, after less than three days in the aquarium, I look in on them this morning and the tank is full of babies!!! Now I'm having a panic as this is about the only thing I haven't read up on yet. Is there anything I need to do differently now that I have babies in the tank, and what do I feed them! Think I read somewhere that the babies really need small live foods if they are to thrive.

Any help greatly appreciated!!

Popski

 

[Miss Wiggle]

hi and welcome to the hobby and the forum

yeah you'll find mollies and most livebearers do that, here's a great pinned topic on how to deal with fry.

personally i just leave it up to nature. the parents and any other fish will probably eat most of the babies. while this may sound cruel if you've onyl just set up a tank and just got the one then you've probably not got room for 20 6" fish when all these mollies grow up. and the female mollies store up sperm so even if you removed the males from the tanks she's could have another 3/4 lots of babies in the next few months.

a lot of people just leave it up to natural selection, whatever fry survive by themselves you can usually find room for cos there won't be more than 1/2 fish from each batch.

 

[popski]

hi and welcome to the hobby and the forum

yeah you'll find mollies and most livebearers do that, here's a great pinned topic on how to deal with fry.

personally i just leave it up to nature. the parents and any other fish will probably eat most of the babies. while this may sound cruel if you've onyl just set up a tank and just got the one then you've probably not got room for 20 6" fish when all these mollies grow up. and the female mollies store up sperm so even if you removed the males from the tanks she's could have another 3/4 lots of babies in the next few months.

a lot of people just leave it up to natural selection, whatever fry survive by themselves you can usually find room for cos there won't be more than 1/2 fish from each batch.

Thanks for that - yes I was wondering how my tank was going to cope with another 30 odd fish!! As it was a new tank set up and I started with just the one pair of fish, I was planning to add a couple more this weekend. Will I be ok to go ahead with this or should I leave it?

Thanks very much,

Popski

 

[Miss Wiggle]

did you fishless cycle the tank before adding any fish?

if not you should read this before you even think about putting more fish in there.

while the moral descision to save the fry or not is yours, the natural selection thing is pretty well accepted in fishkeeping