New Molly Colony! New adopted fish

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AdoraBelle Dearheart

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Really hard time taking decent pics, but this was the best I could do for now.

There are this pair of adult mollies, I really like them and these photos don't do them justice at all. Blurry because I've messed up my camera settings and the mollies are constantly moving, while also blending in to the black background. I'll try again tomorrow, but I want to show what I can now.

The male does court the female pretty constantly, but she definitely puts him in his place and chases him off when she's had enough! Then he moves away and I swear, he sulks for a bit before going back to her.
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@emeraldking he does have some gold flecks! His other side is more white/possibly some blue. It does look like he might have some blue to him, but that might be the tank light reflecting on some white scales. Wish I could get a photo when he's flaring his fins, they're really nicely shaped.
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The female is a good size already, and have 30 or so molly fry too, which is a nice surprise! The guy said they're guppy fry, but I'm much happier to have some molly fry.
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There's oddly this one slightly larger molly baby from a previous batch, then another 30 or so tiny fry just colouring up. Looks like there might be some bright white and black speckled dalmation-like fry that I like the look of so far.
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The guppies! He said there were eight male guppies, but I count 10 males, and there was one poor young female being followed by a queue of males. Have separated her now! I do wonder how long she's been the one female guppy! She looks about 3-4 months old, doesn't look as though she's had fry before, but she will soon I'm sure...!

Most of the males have the red tail, silver dorsal and dark purple body, which is the same as guppies I've had before, but there are a few that are different. There's this lighter coloured cobra(?) guy, who is much prettier in person:
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And a single male with the red tail and yellow/white body, which I like even more.
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This guy has purple through his tail, nice deep purple colour body.

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A couple of the smaller molly fry
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More photos coming of the one unhealthy looking guppy....

These guys are in quarantine, I might worm them just as a precaution since I've dealt with worms in my tanks before and don't want to again! Since these came from *big box store I won't name, but do not like at all* I feel like worming while in QT would be sensible, but I'm pleasantly surprised at how well all but one look.

The long term plan is set up my 240L tank and scape it in a way I like! Playsand, live plants, decent amount of wood, and more planning than I've done before. So there will be a tank build soon! Likely at the end of the month, so the plan is for these to live in the 240L with my bronze/sterbai cory gang, two plecs, last remaining elderly tetra, and my very shy, well behaved female blue gourami. I've really missed having mollies like these, so I'm happy to have these guys!
 
Nice looking fish...getting them to "sit and stay" for photographs though is frustrating, nothing worse than sitting infront of an aquarium wanting to get the best shot and the fish refusing to co-operate, then when you give up, they all stay perfectly still infront of the glass (you can almost see them poking their tongues out at you) ;)
 
nice adopted fish colony!

the tuxedo guppies are awesome!

the female will have fry very soon so then you can restore the population of females
 
nice adopted fish colony!

the tuxedo guppies are awesome!

the female will have fry very soon so then you can restore the population of females

Haha, I think I'm gonna be rehoming the girl before that happens, hopefully! I like the guppies, but I don't want both mollies and guppies breeding honestly, it gets to be too much way too fast, and I've bred enough guppies! I do know a good hobbyist friend who has guppies that I'm sure would welcome her though! I mainly wanted these guys for the mollies, but I'm also happy to keep just the male guppies!

I certainly don't want 10 or more female guppies churning out fry! :eek: Was bad enough when I started with six females...was swamped with fry in no time. :lol:

Nice looking fish...getting them to "sit and stay" for photographs though is frustrating, nothing worse than sitting infront of an aquarium wanting to get the best shot and the fish refusing to co-operate, then when you give up, they all stay perfectly still infront of the glass (you can almost see them poking their tongues out at you) ;)
THEY REALLY DO! :rofl:


It's my fault too, have been using my dad's expensive camera, which I know can take amazing pics, but I have zero photography skills and it's easy to accidentally press a button or move the lens slightly, and mess up the shutter speed and stuff. So I've been playing with the settings trying to fix it, but fish are one of the hardest things to photograph, I think!

Have a friend visiting soon who is a great photographer, so will enlist his help in resetting the camera so even a dummy like me can take nice photos again! :lol:
 
Haha, I think I'm gonna be rehoming the girl before that happens, hopefully! I like the guppies, but I don't want both mollies and guppies breeding honestly, it gets to be too much way too fast, and I've bred enough guppies! I do know a good hobbyist friend who has guppies that I'm sure would welcome her though! I mainly wanted these guys for the mollies, but I'm also happy to keep just the male guppies!

I certainly don't want 10 or more female guppies churning out fry! :eek: Was bad enough when I started with six females...was swamped with fry in no time. :lol:


THEY REALLY DO! :rofl:


It's my fault too, have been using my dad's expensive camera, which I know can take amazing pics, but I have zero photography skills and it's easy to accidentally press a button or move the lens slightly, and mess up the shutter speed and stuff. So I've been playing with the settings trying to fix it, but fish are one of the hardest things to photograph, I think!

Have a friend visiting soon who is a great photographer, so will enlist his help in resetting the camera so even a dummy like me can take nice photos again! :lol:
I’ve tried expensive cameras and i found that actually iphone cameras work best

-i like to take pictures during the daytime.that will make photos more bright and less blurry

- Take photos after feeding not while feeding.
The fish get aggressive while feeding and they fight for the food and zoom around, but adter there is no food, they calm down but are still in the spot you want them to be in
 
I-phones ARE expensive cameras!!!

Do I see an orange tip along the male's dorsal? I always sought that in mollies.
 
@emeraldking he does have some gold flecks! His other side is more white/possibly some blue. It does look like he might have some blue to him, but that might be the tank light reflecting on some white scales. Wish I could get a photo when he's flaring his fins, they're really nicely shaped.
No matter if the golden color is effectively present or just a shine (when it's hit by light), it remains a wild trait.
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Have the camera flash ON.
Set the camera to shutter priority.
Set shutter speed to 1/200.
Manual focus and take lots of pictures.
 
Have the camera flash ON.
Set the camera to shutter priority.
Set shutter speed to 1/200.
Manual focus and take lots of pictures.
I don't know how to do any of that though...lol! My photography hobbyist friend is coming down the night before the funeral, on the 19th, so will ask him to fix it for me and give me an idea of how it work in "photography for dummies" language! It's a nice camera, a Fujifilm X-T10. Dad would want me to keep using it and not let it go to waste. :) ❤️


@Sgooosh I'm an android kinda girl! Never owned an Apple product, have no intentions of owning one!
Update on the fish - the one that I didn't like the look of, had some swim bladder issue did pass away a couple of days after arrival, poor little dude.
But the rest are looking really good! Have spent a lot of time observing them and haven't seen anything to worry about. I'm undecided on whether to worm them while in QT, just in case. What do you think @Colin_T and @emeraldking ? Would you worm them just in case since I still have leftover (effective and in-date) worming meds, since they're store livebearers?

The fish originally came from Pets at Home I believe, and the very few times I've gone there, I haven't been impressed. The store here doesn't have a great fishkeeping department. The man clearly didn't know much about fishkeeping, they'd just set up a 70L tank and bought some pretty fish for the kid, then got a bit overwhelmed with numbers I think, so I doubt they've wormed them. Part of me doesn't want to put them through meds if there's no symptoms, but I'll also kick myself if I don't do it, and wind up with worms in my main tanks again...


-i like to take pictures during the daytime.that will make photos more bright and less blurry
I've usually managed to get better photos (I have before, just not recently!) by taking them at night, and making sure every other light source in the room but the tank light is off. With the sun beaming even through closed curtains, or have a lamp or ceiling light on, and you get more reflections off the front glass.
- Take photos after feeding not while feeding.
The fish get aggressive while feeding and they fight for the food and zoom around, but adter there is no food, they calm down but are still in the spot you want them to be in

Very good point! Sometimes a tab stuck to the glass draws them out, but fish definitely do get pretty zoomy when there's food!
I-phones ARE expensive cameras!!!
I'm Applephobic!
Do I see an orange tip along the male's dorsal? I always sought that in mollies.

He does! A beautiful gold edge all along the dorsal. He's a handsome boy!
No matter if the golden color is effectively present or just a shine (when it's hit by light), it remains a wild trait.
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Does this mean mine are sailfins? The adults look like a marble (the male) and a fairly typical black molly female, although she does have some speckling too. She is a big girl, and sailfins are generally larger, aren't they? A friend thought my previous trio might be sailfin/black molly hybrids. I'm guessing there are lots of hybrids around? I do really like the wild traits! That Wild Sailfin and the Marble molly on the left in that chart are absolutely gorgeous.
Looks to me like the fry are going to turn out a mix of marbles and dalmations. I know it's too early to tell for sure, they can change colour a lot and these are only small and beginning to develop their colouration, but some of them have such an eye catching bright white main body colour developing some black speckles now, that I hope they turn out silver-ish dalmation molly.
 
What do you think @Colin_T and @emeraldking ? Would you worm them just in case since I still have leftover (effective and in-date) worming meds, since they're store livebearers?
It won't hurt them to do so....
Does this mean mine are sailfins?
They're sailfins or at least sailfin hybrids. But nowadays breeding forms of sailfins are not pure Poecilia velifera or Poecilia latipinna anymore. But the sailfin phenotype will be more dominant present than the influence of another kind of molly when we're dealing with a hybrid sailfin.
Real black mollies have a shorter dorsal when it comes to males. The black sailfins are actually developed out of mottled wild specimens but the black blotches are dominant present. If cross those for a couple of generations, you'll get total black sailfins. The black molly that's derived from the Poecilia sphenops won't be found in the wild but speckled and mottles ones can be found. But black and very mottled sailfin specimens do occur in the wild.
 
It won't hurt them to do so....

They're sailfins or at least sailfin hybrids. But nowadays breeding forms of sailfins are not pure Poecilia velifera or Poecilia latipinna anymore. But the sailfin phenotype will be more dominant present than the influence of another kind of molly when we're dealing with a hybrid sailfin.
Real black mollies have a shorter dorsal when it comes to males. The black sailfins are actually developed out of mottled wild specimens but the black blotches are dominant present. If cross those for a couple of generations, you'll get total black sailfins. The black molly that's derived from the Poecilia sphenops won't be found in the wild but speckled and mottles ones can be found. But black and very mottled sailfin specimens do occur in the wild.

Thank you so much for taking the time to share your knowledge with us! It's awesome that we have so many experts here with decades of experience with different types of fish. I'm really happy to have these mollies, because they're so similar to the three we had before. Nostalgia I guess! And excited to have 30 odd baby mollies just beginning to colour up and see how they turn out!
I want to keep and breed these ones for a while (hopefully not a batch of 30 every 6-8 weeks though!) but I could also see myself getting into wanting a wild type molly! Is it possible for a casual hobbyist like me to get wild line mollies?
 
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It won't hurt them to do so....

They're sailfins or at least sailfin hybrids. But nowadays breeding forms of sailfins are not pure Poecilia velifera or Poecilia latipinna anymore. But the sailfin phenotype will be more dominant present than the influence of another kind of molly when we're dealing with a hybrid sailfin.
Real black mollies have a shorter dorsal when it comes to males. The black sailfins are actually developed out of mottled wild specimens but the black blotches are dominant present. If cross those for a couple of generations, you'll get total black sailfins. The black molly that's derived from the Poecilia sphenops won't be found in the wild but speckled and mottles ones can be found. But black and very mottled sailfin specimens do occur in the wild.

This was the male in my previous, original trio, he did have a short dorsal! Bit of a stubby looking boy, haha. You can see most of the fry in these pics look like the parents, mottled black/silver/blue, but there is one jet black young male behind the big male in both pics... I kept that one because he was a pure jet black, and beautifully shaped.

I lost the last ones I had of this line in a tank crash though, I was so gutted to lose the last ones.
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