One of the most popular aquarium fish found at pet stores are mollies because of their wide selection of colors, energetic behavior, and ease of breeding.
If you are looking for a livebearer (or fish that bears live young) that is bigger than a platy but smaller than a swordtail, then mollies strike a happy medium. While molly fish are fairly easy to care for, beginners sometimes struggle with them, so find out the secret to caring for mollies and successfully breeding them in your home.
Mollies are an ideal choice of live bearing fish (i.e. they don’t lay eggs) to place in a community aquarium or fish tank. They come in a variety of colors, and work well with a wide community of other fish.
For the most part, mollies are very easy to breed. A single female can produce over one hundred baby mollies, also called fry, in one live birth.
Mollies are hierarchical fish. Whichever male has the biggest fins and boldest colors leads the way. This means the ideal combination of male and female fish is one male for multiple females.
- * You may see the male under the female; this is how the fish copulate.
* If their mating is successful, their babies should be born in about 3 to 5 weeks.
Place the female in a separate “nurser” tank if possible. The male fish often chases around the female, wishing to copulate more, and this could cause stress on the pregnancy. You’ll be able to tell the molly is pregnant by a very distended belly.
* If the “nurser” tank is not possible, consider using an aquarium net breeder, which is essentially a mesh cube with plastic edges, to protect the mother and baby fish.
Removing the mother from the main aquarium is also to protect the fry. Molly fish often cannibalize their babies.
Don’t wait too close to the birth date. Stressed mollies may have more aborted births and stillborn.
The female may eat her own young, so it’s best to move her back with the other fish for the safety of the fry. [4] Roughly once per month, however, the mother may need to be re-segregated since female molly fish can retain multiple fertilized eggs for nearly half a year.
Use ground fish food of the same type that you feed to your adult mollies. Flake food should be used as a primary base. Supplement the normal meals with a broad variety of denser meals.
Various worms are great for molly fish. Grindal worms, black worms, and blood worms work well.
Brine shrimp, live or frozen, are a preferred source of food.
Molly fish even eat algae, which is their primary food in the wild.
It will take around nearly two months to be able to tell males and females apart. Once they’ve doubled in size, it’s probably safe to introduce them into the main tank with the rest of the fish.