LadyDragon
Fish Fanatic
Aloha everyone,
Last month I started a new "colony" of Mollies:
1 male leopard sailfin balloon lyretail
1 female wild color lyretail
1 female black Baloon
1 female big(almost 4 inches long) white sailfin
3 indexed juvaniles
They are in a 30g long tank with 5 longfin Panda Corys, 5 Kuhli loaches, 2 blue female guppies and a couple Japanese trapdoor snails from my Koi pond. They have plenty plant cover and a couple floating water hyacinth that they seem very fond of eating and playing in.
The big white female sailfin is easily twice the size of everyone else... She had a gravid spot when I bought them, and dropped 10 fry on her 4th day in the tank (they were removed to a separate 10g tank to grow, and now all are happily almost guppy sized) anyway, a couple days ago the male began obsessing over the female black balloon, who I am sure is going to drop fry soon (hard to tell if she is gravid, but she had been in with him almost 4 weeks now, and he has been mating with her since day 1) he is constantly swimming right below her belly and rubbing against her vent area...
The thing that is confusing me is that he has began chasing the large white female AGRESSIVELY... He had mated and used to court her many times in the previous weeks... Now -for nearly a week- he only fixates on the black Balloon female, and leaves her belly only to eat and chase the white female aggressively, it doesn't look like the courtship dances he used to do, he just flattens his fins and charges at her, then chases her around the tank til he looses sight of her.
Is this kind of thing normal? Or should I separate him from the girls for a couple days to see if that helps with his strange new behavior? (as I am fairly certain the obsession with one female and aggression toward another female is abnormal for a male livebearer)
Last month I started a new "colony" of Mollies:
1 male leopard sailfin balloon lyretail
1 female wild color lyretail
1 female black Baloon
1 female big(almost 4 inches long) white sailfin
3 indexed juvaniles
They are in a 30g long tank with 5 longfin Panda Corys, 5 Kuhli loaches, 2 blue female guppies and a couple Japanese trapdoor snails from my Koi pond. They have plenty plant cover and a couple floating water hyacinth that they seem very fond of eating and playing in.
The big white female sailfin is easily twice the size of everyone else... She had a gravid spot when I bought them, and dropped 10 fry on her 4th day in the tank (they were removed to a separate 10g tank to grow, and now all are happily almost guppy sized) anyway, a couple days ago the male began obsessing over the female black balloon, who I am sure is going to drop fry soon (hard to tell if she is gravid, but she had been in with him almost 4 weeks now, and he has been mating with her since day 1) he is constantly swimming right below her belly and rubbing against her vent area...
The thing that is confusing me is that he has began chasing the large white female AGRESSIVELY... He had mated and used to court her many times in the previous weeks... Now -for nearly a week- he only fixates on the black Balloon female, and leaves her belly only to eat and chase the white female aggressively, it doesn't look like the courtship dances he used to do, he just flattens his fins and charges at her, then chases her around the tank til he looses sight of her.
Is this kind of thing normal? Or should I separate him from the girls for a couple days to see if that helps with his strange new behavior? (as I am fairly certain the obsession with one female and aggression toward another female is abnormal for a male livebearer)
