Baby Mollies And Guppies

[Scally]

Can anyone give me advice on looking after small fry. One of my mollies had babies at the weekend and one or two guppies have given birth today. I have the ladies in a separate tank and the babies in a plastic breeding tank within that tank. I have bought fry food and am feeding them that quite often. I just wondered how long do I feed them the fry food before I can start giving them crushed up dry food or something and also how long do they need to be separated from my main tank. Breeding tank is 36 litres. Main tank 180 litres. The largest fish in my main tank are swordfin mollies.

 

[martyn413]

Hi Scally,

Guppies have small mouths so they usually cannot eat their fry after a few days/weeks. However Mollies can.

I use to feed my fry crushed flake food.

I would put them in the tank when have developed colour and are about the size of a neon tetra.

Just to make you aware that livebears will get pregnant often and you could have a tank full of fish within a few months. Believe me I've learned the hard way.

If you want to minimise on fry, i would put the guppies in the small tank. Mollies and swordtails can eat most of the fry, however fry will try to survive so make sure there are not to many hiding places.

Anyway I hope this helps.

Martyn

 

[OldMan47]

The fry can be kept in the 36 litre container until they are about 2 cm long. At that size they will do fine in a main tank with sailfin mollies. As far as fish food, I never bother with special fry food for live bearers. They are big enough when they are born to take regular flake food crushed between your fingertips. Occasional feedings of brine shrimp and daphnia mixed in with the flake feedings will get them growing faster and let you return them to the main tank a little sooner. As Martyn said, leaving the fry in the main tank will control the population to almost no survivors. I never see fry in my community tanks because the other fish see them first. When I want to save fry, I separate the mother to a tank by herself with lots of plant cover until the big day. Then I put her back in the main tank as soon as she stops giving birth. That lets most of the fry survive in the breeding tank.

 

[Scally]

Thanks for the advice, the mollies are beginning to get colour but the guppies are still quite transparent - but so cute !!
I am crushing up freeze dried krill which they seem to like.
Some of my son's friends are going to have the babies once they get old enough to leave home so hopefully I won't get too overrun, I'll just have to get another tank if I do.

 

[OldMan47]

Be careful with the krill, its like icecream for fish. They love it but its not a good steady diet. You need to feed a very large variety of fresh foods to get a balance or much easier is any quality flake food used as the main diet with occasional feedings of things such as krill, blood worms, brine shrimp or daphnia.

 

[sonofdelboy]

hi i am new i have just set up a tropical tank not so long ago my fish had fry with in the first week of having the tank set up but the mother did not have them in the breeding tank i found a few and put them into my breeding tank and then a few days later i found 2 more so i put them in i started feeding them on crusshed flake a few days later two of them died i dont know if they got damaged during transport to my breeding tank but the breeding tank is a floating one which i have in my main tank so i let the rest of them out now to this day i have not seen one of them will they have got eaten ?? and next time how do i know when the female is about to have them ?
,thanks
sonofdelboy

 

[OldMan47]

Chances are that if you left newborn fry in the main tank there are no more fry. The adult fish will have treated them as fish food.
There are several approaches that can help some survive. The easiest and perhaps least effective is to have heavy plantings of fine leaved plants for the fry to hide in, it will let a few survive. Next is breeding traps or nets that go inside your main tank, they will help some fry survive if you are careful not to overfeed the fry and don't let any other fish in with them. The most effective and most expensive is a separate tank with proper water temperatures and a cycled filter. If you put a female in there and remove her as soon as she gives birth, most of the fry will survive. I am running such a tank right now and have some dwarf corydoras in the tank to help clean up the food that the fry miss. I am using a dwarf sized cory because newborn molly and platy fry are large enough to not look like food to a dwarf cory but they might look like food to a larger one.