Hey everyone! First time fish owner here! I just got back from our pet store with two female mollies Saturday and Sunday morning our black one had babies! I had no idea what to do but ended up making a breeder box out of a pop bottle. (Thank god for youtube)the store has agreed to take the babies back but I would like to keep one or two. How old do they have to be before you can tell the sex? And are they OK to keep them in the pop bottle? Also how many times a day do I have to feed them? Sorry for all the question's. I didn't plan on having a tank full of babies a few into owning my first fish!!
My Molly Just Had Babies!
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I would advise keeping them in the bottle if you cant get a proper breeder box/fry box as the parents will probably try to eat them you can normally tell the sex after about 4 weeks when there colour properly comes through and are about 1cm in size. I feed my fry on liqifry fry food but if you dont have any then finely ground fish flake will work. Just make sure its small enough for them to eat. I used to crush it into powder form before i bought the fry food. Hope this helps
Sorry to butt in, but I have to disagree with welshie on this issue.
A pop bottle is far too small for growing fry. Livebearers produce a hormone that stops them growing, once it reaches a certain concentration, so you need as large a volume of water as possible to keep that concentration low, or the fry become stunted.
If you want to raise fry properly you need a separate grow out tank. If you can't do that, then add lots and lots of live plants to the main tank to give the fry plenty of hiding places, and leave them in there. Some may get eaten by the adults, but some will survive and, as mollies can easily have 30 or 40 fry, every month, there's no way you can raise them all anyway (unless you have masses of grow out tanks...).
A pop bottle is far too small for growing fry. Livebearers produce a hormone that stops them growing, once it reaches a certain concentration, so you need as large a volume of water as possible to keep that concentration low, or the fry become stunted.
If you want to raise fry properly you need a separate grow out tank. If you can't do that, then add lots and lots of live plants to the main tank to give the fry plenty of hiding places, and leave them in there. Some may get eaten by the adults, but some will survive and, as mollies can easily have 30 or 40 fry, every month, there's no way you can raise them all anyway (unless you have masses of grow out tanks...).
If I put them back in the big tank with the two female mollies and my two zebra with extra trees they will be ok (well most of them) when if I went and bought a bigger breading box to set in the tank....would that work? The pet store actually said they would take the babies back. I'd like to keep one or twould but I'm nervous to end up with a male then I'm right back in the same boat 
What you have to remember is that there are two main strategies for breeding; a small number of babies that you care for very carefully (humans have taken that path to the extreme ) or a large number that you don't bother caring for at all; the livebearer route.
This means that they have evolved to have many more fry than the environment can support, because so many are lost to predation. You'll very often see livebearer females turn around and eat the fry they've literally just given birth to.
There's no getting away from the fact that some fry, perhaps even most, will get eaten in the main tank (mollies are much worse for eating fry than, for example, guppies, IME) but, in the long run, that's the way nature works.
It may sound harsh, but as each of your females can have 30 or 40 fry (or even more; 60 or 80 is not unheard of) every 30 days, and they store 'packets' of sperm so they can continue getting pregnant even if there are no males around, and that the fry themselves can start breeding at around two or three months old... well, you can do the maths...
There is just no way any normal fishkeeper can raise that many fry properly, especially once you take into account the fact that each 'litter' of fry really needs around a ten gallon tank to have enough space to grow properly.
If you have some hiding spaces for the fry in your main tank (cheap pond plants or floating plants are good for this; livebearer fry tend to hang out at the water surface) I can assure you, you'll have plenty surviving.
) or a large number that you don't bother caring for at all; the livebearer route.This means that they have evolved to have many more fry than the environment can support, because so many are lost to predation. You'll very often see livebearer females turn around and eat the fry they've literally just given birth to.
There's no getting away from the fact that some fry, perhaps even most, will get eaten in the main tank (mollies are much worse for eating fry than, for example, guppies, IME) but, in the long run, that's the way nature works.
It may sound harsh, but as each of your females can have 30 or 40 fry (or even more; 60 or 80 is not unheard of) every 30 days, and they store 'packets' of sperm so they can continue getting pregnant even if there are no males around, and that the fry themselves can start breeding at around two or three months old... well, you can do the maths...
There is just no way any normal fishkeeper can raise that many fry properly, especially once you take into account the fact that each 'litter' of fry really needs around a ten gallon tank to have enough space to grow properly.
If you have some hiding spaces for the fry in your main tank (cheap pond plants or floating plants are good for this; livebearer fry tend to hang out at the water surface) I can assure you, you'll have plenty surviving.
I highly suggest you even return the two mollies and get males. As mollies and platy fish are live bearers. They can even mate with each other! Get this, a molly and platy female only need to mate ONCE as they retain the sperm from the first mating and can have 4-5 batches of fry before they need to mate again. That means you CAN and WILL have more! I've had male mollies in schools as large as 9 and they never really fought with each other, even at feeding time. They just swam around and chilled. Mature mollies are easy to sex by their anal fins. Even if you have to have the pet store employee fish the right one out a couple of times i HIGHLY suggest exchanging the females for males. Did the employee who sold you the fish tell you they were livebearers? Having fish that breed a lot can be a burden to a beginner. Here is a picture to make it easier to sex them.Fishmom2 said:
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