Is my molly pregnant

[Aiyee]

Hi,

I've had 2 female adult mollies since January and they have never been pregnant as there have never been any adult male mollies in the tank.....

However, I do have 2 other mollies that are now 9 months old. One of the mollies has just 'turned' into a male this week....he definitely had a female anal fin last week, but throughout the last 5-6 days, the anal fin has been changing and it is definitely a gonopodium now.

One of my adult female mollies now looks like she is pregnant - there is a dark spot near her anal fin, which I'm assuming is the gravid spot and her belly is definitely looking swollen. She is also hiding much more.

Can this happen so quickly after my 9 month old molly changed into male? It's only been a few days and I've never seen him interact with the 2 adult mollies. Or is there something else wrong with my adult molly?

Thanks!

 

[GuppyDude]

livebearing females can hold sperm form a male for up to 6 months, likely got pregnant at the lfs and still is useing that sperm to make more babys. iv also heard rumors of female mollys being able to get pregnant without a male, i think some one explained it as a natural survival thing that they do when there are no males around, but i dout that. how long ahve u had her. you male would npt be able to get her preggo that quickly.

 

[Annastasia]

GuppyDude, the only ones that can get pregnant without a male are Amazon Mollies.

And yes, they could get pregnant that quickly, I don't see any reason why they couldn't. As soon as the male has a gonopodium, he can impregnate females. Because since he was already a male, he was already making sperm...but I won't go into that. Or, it's possible, your female's gravid spot is just showing through, as she gets older. They always have a gravid spot, pregnant or not. Maybe you just didn't notice it before?

Or yes, they could have stored sperm, but they would have gotten pregnant already, and had fry already, and I'm sure you would have noticed that.

 

[Aiyee]

Thanks for the advice.

Still not sure if the molly in question is pregnant or not. What is weird, though, is this:

Let's call the molly we suspect might be pregnant Yellow. There's another adult female molly in the tank who we'll call White. We got these mollies together at the same time in January and they've always got along fine.

In the last few days, though, White has been constantly following Yellow and appears to be constantly sucking at the area around her anal fin. She's not being vicious and Yellow appears a bit annoyed rather than actively threatened. But it's constant, virtually 24 hours a day. Wherever Yellow goes, White is there, sucking constantly at her side.

Have you ever seen anything like this?

 

[Annastasia]

Are you sure White is not male, as that sounds like classic male behavior...Pregnant fish secrete hormones, which the males are attracted too. I suppose females could be too...but are you 100% sure it's a female?

 

[GuppyDude]

amazon mollies, aha!, all comeing back now

the yellow one like anna said is prolly pregnant and giveing off hormones, while both male and female are attracted to these hormones the females do not activly harass the pregnant female, but males will. im thinking white is just a late developeing male rather than a female, this happens in swordtails all teh time so i dont see why mollys would be an exception.

 

[Aiyee]

the yellow one like anna said is prolly pregnant and giveing off hormones, while both male and female are attracted to these hormones the females do not activly harass the pregnant female, but males will. im thinking white is just a late developeing male rather than a female, this happens in swordtails all teh time so i dont see why mollys would be an exception.

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I'm 99% certain that White is a female. Her anal fin is quite apparent.

We've also had her since January and she was fully-grown back then. How late do males develop?? Besides, she's been in a tank with an adult female for nine months now - I suspect we might have had babies before if she was actually male.

So do females definitely not harass other pregnant females? I'm starting to think she might be a bit confused - but I don't think she's male!