Molly Babies!

[stucolls]

WICKED!! bought 4 Dalmation Mollies on Saturday, 3F and 1F, I thought one looked pretty preggers so bought a little breeding trap yesterday in anticipation, low and behold this morning!!!!! 15 babies, that I found anyway, I scopped em all up into the breeding trap, any advice on rearing them asap?

cheers, will try attaching a picture

Stu

 

[merry78]

replied to your post in emergency section. Good luck!

 

[SnBMeg]

Congratulations!

Give them as much space as you possibly can and try to feed them at least 2-3 times a day (up to 5.) Keep up with tank cleaning and water changes, especially if you're feeding heavily. After a few days they'll readily accept powdered flake food (I just grind up regular flakes), and when they're large enough they'll love frozen brine shrimp. If you can hatch live baby brine shrimp for them, then that's even better. Within 2 weeks or so they'll be large enough to put with the adults (though keeping them separate will mean less competition for food.) Within 3-4 months they should be to a size that most pet stores would take them.

(And keep an eye out for more fry--they can hide quite well, and I've found sneakers up to 4 days after they were born, peeking behind tank equipment and plant leaves.)

One of my juvie dalmations just had her first fry on Friday! I've found 14 so far and it looks like some of them may be calico like their daddy. :3 *fingers crossed for lyre-tail calicos!*

And, I'm curious, how long are your new fry? I'm wondering if there's a difference in fry size between different breeds, but there's not a whole lot of particular info to be found.

 

[stucolls]

Congratulations!

Give them as much space as you possibly can and try to feed them at least 2-3 times a day (up to 5.) Keep up with tank cleaning and water changes, especially if you're feeding heavily. After a few days they'll readily accept powdered flake food (I just grind up regular flakes), and when they're large enough they'll love frozen brine shrimp. If you can hatch live baby brine shrimp for them, then that's even better. Within 2 weeks or so they'll be large enough to put with the adults (though keeping them separate will mean less competition for food.) Within 3-4 months they should be to a size that most pet stores would take them.

(And keep an eye out for more fry--they can hide quite well, and I've found sneakers up to 4 days after they were born, peeking behind tank equipment and plant leaves.)

One of my juvie dalmations just had her first fry on Friday! I've found 14 so far and it looks like some of them may be calico like their daddy. :3 *fingers crossed for lyre-tail calicos!*

And, I'm curious, how long are your new fry? I'm wondering if there's a difference in fry size between different breeds, but there's not a whole lot of particular info to be found.

Id say my fry are around 2-3mm in length at moment, all but one look clear but one has a distinctive black tail already (I dont know alot about breeds).
They have wicked little eyes and already look like proper little fishies, im over the moon lol
thanks for the advice, do you reckon its worth setting up a seperate small tank or just use a breeding net for a few weeks?

 

[SnBMeg]

How large is the net? 15 babies will probably be fine in there for a couple of weeks, but the more space you can give them, the faster they'll grow. Their current color can give you a reasonable idea of what they'll look like when they're older, and in a few weeks the color will be quite obvious, though it can still shift as the fish grow (several of my greens suddenly developed sparse dalmation spots, and two now have literally yellow bellies.) Dalmations will gain spots as they grow, so no worries if at first they look mostly white; if you have fry that look black, they'll likely grow up to be predominantly dark.

The fry are great, aren't they? It's really neat watching them grow and fill out, but there's something special about them when they're still in that itty-bitty bug stage.

The thing I've really been wondering about the fry size is if balloon mollies have generally smaller fry than regular or sailfin mollies because of their modified body shape. In theory, the fry should either be the same size as or smaller than other breeds. My balloons average 4-5mm at birth, occasionally a little larger.

If they are the same size (or larger) then I'd expect the number of fry in each birth to generally be smaller than that of other breeds. My largest balloon birth to date was 29 fry; rather average, or the low side of average, for any molly birth.