Molly fry surprise

[bigroof]

So went to to the LFS and bought some beautiful mollies about 3 days ago. Did all my research and all sorts on molly care. Obviously being livebearers they will breed. So i got 2 males and 4 females so every bodies love life will be okay i guess. I read about the molly breed cycle its 30 days or so. I dont know if its right or not. Then i went to work this morning and my wife called me and says your new tank has babies. When i got home and saw one of the big mommas has already dropped the babies. I quickly got a tank ready and they are in there now. Now the question is what to feed. I heard that yellow part of the egg is okay for just born fry. Is this okay?

 

[Colin_T]

Under good conditions, female mollies will drop a batch of fry every month. Younger females usually have smaller batches more often. Older females have bigger batches less often.

The baby fish will eat anything small enough. You can crumble up flake food. You can buy powdered fry food for egg layers or livebearers. The egg layer food is finer than the livebearer food. You can feed them the yolk of a boiled egg. Hard boil an egg and remove the white. Put the yolk in a handkerchief and squeeze it into a container of dechlorinated water. Shake the solution up and use an eye dropper to suck some out and drip it into the tank with the babies.

Make sure you monitor water quality closely when using egg yolk and other foods because they can cause ammonia spikes.

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If you want to breed mollies, guppies, platies or swordtails, just get females. They can carry sperm packets around for at least 6 months and use those to fertilise batches of eggs. No males required until after they have used up all the sperm packets.

 

[bigroof]

Under good conditions, female mollies will drop a batch of fry every month. Younger females usually have smaller batches more often. Older females have bigger batches less often.

The baby fish will eat anything small enough. You can crumble up flake food. You can buy powdered fry food for egg layers or livebearers. The egg layer food is finer than the livebearer food. You can feed them the yolk of a boiled egg. Hard boil an egg and remove the white. Put the yolk in a handkerchief and squeeze it into a container of dechlorinated water. Shake the solution up and use an eye dropper to suck some out and drip it into the tank with the babies.

Make sure you monitor water quality closely when using egg yolk and other foods because they can cause ammonia spikes.

-------------------
If you want to breed mollies, guppies, platies or swordtails, just get females. They can carry sperm packets around for at least 6 months and use those to fertilise batches of eggs. No males required until after they have used up all the sperm packets.

Thanks @Colin_T . I will try the egg yolk for the 1st week or so and then crumble up some flakes and start on that. I heard feeding them bloodworms os also good. I know its not a good idea just as they are born. When do you think they will be ready for bloodworms?

 

[Colin_T]

You can feed the flake from the day they are swimming around.

The babies should be at least 1 inch long (not including tail) before you offer them frozen bloodworms. And you should cut the bloodworms up with a pr of scissors to make them smaller. this will leave red stuff everywhere so do it over a bowl and wash your hands, scissors and bowl with hot soapy water afterwards.

You can feed them on newly hatched brineshrimp and microworms now. You can buy frozen newly hatched brineshrimp from some pet shops and this is good too.

When they are bigger, you can add frozen brineshrimp, daphnia, mysis shrimp, raw or cooked prawn (use cooked if you have shrimp in the tank), and marine mix (available from some pet shops in the freezer).