I wanted to create this help guide on what to do when your mollies are pregnant. There are a couple different paths you can choose to go down. I like to give two routes in this situation. You can choose to not care for the babies or you can try to raise them yourself. Let’s dive into this!
Pregnant Molly Fish – Babies on the Way
The first sign of your Molly being pregnant is going to be a swollen stomach. Maybe you took a second glance at her and wondered if something was wrong or if she might be pregnant. It’s always an awesome feeling to know that your fish are healthy enough to call that tank home and breed their children there.
Option 1: Taking Caring of the Babies
I can see the passion behind wanting to keep these cute babies. It’s a super fun process and is pretty easy at the same time. I would especially like to have children be involved in this beautiful process. It just seems like a great moral for children to learn about. Let’s give a quick guide on how to take care of these babies on the way.
Watching for the Babies
Most fish are going to want to eat these small little babies! To do this we watch closely for the pregnant Molly female to get super close to dropping her young. It is said that there will be a “V” shape at the bottom of her stomach right before laying.
How Long Tell Give Birth?
It will take a molly fish a couple of weeks to give birth. All fish are somewhat different because we really don’t actually know when the pregnancy date started.. and each fish will show the pregnancy a bit different (a lot like humans). Everyone wants a definitive answer, but there just isn’t one.
Buy a Breeders Box
A breeders box is a little cage that sits on the top of your aquarium. When the female is close to giving birth you put her in this little cage. The breeders net is designed so that the babies fall through these small holes and the mother cannot eat them. These things are engineered perfect and work amazing! It’s just a clear plastic box so it’s super cheap in cost too. Here is a link:
Using Hiding Places for Babies
Instead of messing around with a breeders box, you can also buy a lot of plants (fake or real). The idea here is to have so many hiding places for the babies to hide inside that the adult fish are unable to eat the babies. A new popular fake plant breeders are using is this artificial plant ball. It works great for letting the babies hide inside the ball and hiding. Here is a picture and link:
Caring for the New Babies
The hard part of getting the babies safe is now over. Caring for them is pretty easy. Make sure your filter intake or any hazard for these TINY fish is gone. Sponge filters work well! Feed them regular flakes but mash them up so they are smaller because their mouth is smaller. The water parameters all need to be the same as regular Mollies. Remember to have a heater if your new fry are in a different tank. We need them in tropical temps too. From there on.. you will care for them tell they hit adulthood. They do grow quite fast and it’s fun to watch them mature. Also, don’t forget about small food for the new babies. Here is a link and picture:
OPTION 2: Not Caring for Babies
Here’s the deal. Even though the female Molly is pregnant and going to give birth to numerous babies, other fish and even the parents will feed on them as soon as given the chance. YES it’s a gruesome thought but that’s Mother Nature. So by doing nothing in your tank, the female will birth her baby fry and they will be eaten.
Heavily Plant Your Tank for Hiding
This route is the middle of the road route that I usually take. I can’t keep up with all my tanks and new baby fry so I let nature take its course. I heavily plant an decorate my tank and this gives the babies a higher success rate of living because they can hide from predators. I will attest to having babies survive and living strong lives. This is a great route to take that doesn’t involve too much work.
Plants with big leaves work really well because they have a lot of coverage for the fish to take corners in and hide. Here is a plant that we order for our tanks. It’s a tall sturdy plant and worth the cheap price!
Posted by Jessica Miung: I’m pretty sure my fish is pregnant because she is acting all weird just sitting by the heater and she has never done that before.. It’s almost like she wants nothing to do with the other fish and I don’t blame her! When I was pregnant I felt the exact same way 🙂 I think were going to take care of the babies and try to put them in a separate tank for my daughter. She is super super super excited. Great guide by the way here. Maybe seeking another article on taking care of the fry more in-depth.
Great idea on another article for in-depth care on new baby fry. I sometimes have issues getting past the small stuff that beginners need to know. I am always trying to make my writings as simple as possible but I do still pass by a lot of info that is needed. My apologies, I will try to get an article up and going for caring for new baby fry.
- Is it possible that a mother molly will give birth to only one fry? I got three mollie gave birth yesterday at the same day. Molly no. 1 gave birth to five babies, molly no. 2 gave birth to 4 babies and the third one gave birth to only 1 fry. I waited all day long if she will have more but nothing came out. Just wondering. I had problems with some of my bottom feeder plecostomus catfish eating my little ones.
- I sometimes get too much fry and I feed them to my turtle tank because I just can’t raise that many.
- I’ve had mollies for a while now and still don’t know jack ! I watched my male bread my female , marked my calendar a month out, witch should have been time for fry ! She stayed in the birthing box for a full week, not one baby . Now 3 weeks later I find these 5 little bundles of joy ! What the heck ?
- I have a 10 gallon tank with babies in it…what can I do about the filter? I want to bump up all the poop and everything but don’t want the babies going in with the poop…I put a panty hose over the filter but I’m not so sure it will clean the tank well (the poop is all stuck to the panty hose). http://www.ecy.wa.gov/programs/wq/plants/algae/lakes/AlgaeInformation.html
- Just get a gravel vacuum and suck the poo out that way. Thwn when your dumping the water out of the bucket look and make sure theres no one swimming in there lol. I do it with my baby tank and sometine one curious one gets in there but they are easy to see and net back out.
- You still need to vacuum your gravel when you use a sponge filter. You should do it every few weeks and remove 25-50% of the water.I think both would be a great idea 🙂 Check amazon and ebay. Thats where I buy most of my stuff.
-
Absolutely not! Not to be one of “those people” but if you have only one molly at least give it 10 gallons of space. You’re more that likely slowly killing your fish. If not by poor water quality (larger aquariums allow for more leeway in things like overfeeding and poor water changes) then you are suffocating it in a more theoretical sense. By putting it in such a small tank you’ve basically limited it’s territory. A molly will do best with at least 10 gallons of space, even if it’s only one.
-
I have two ,one Dalmatian and another orange spotted one they seem to be doing good however my Dalmatian likes to sit beside the heater at the top of my tank for 5 to 10 minutes at a time. He’s been eating good and is swimming but in between that he sits in that one corner ,hope that’s normal. I just got them today hopefully he’ll stop, the other one doesn’t do it he doesn’t seem to be as shy the Dalmatian molly.
- I have a question…
How can one tell if their molly aborted her fry? I am only asking this because the other day, the male I had in the tank with her was nudging her butt constantly, never leaving her side, and I read that this means a few different things. I removed him, but it’s been a two days and I was sure she would have her babies that night, but still no babies and she just keeps pacing up and down the walls, from one side of the tank to the other, almost as if she got a burst of energy, but she has been doing this for a couple of hours. I was told yesterday that she should have about a week to go, but then I started wondering about her aborting her fry because of the male nudging her so much the other day. And it’s kinda hard to tell, but I think her butt is now white. What does this mean? - Thank you so much for the add. I purchased 2 Mollies about 3 weeks ago. One male, one female. I believe they will be having a family soon, lol. I have been watching the female very closely, watching all of her changes, etc. Now her belly is huge and you can see what looks like eggs or the baby’s sacs or something in her belly. I read online on a few different sites that when a female is very close to giving birth, that the other fish in the tank might nudge her butt. The male I have began nudging her butt the other day, but very seldom. But today, he hasn’t left her alone. He just keeps following her everywhere, nudging her butt constantly. I put the male in the breeding box a few minutes ago to keep him from eating the babies if they were to be born while I was sleeping. The tank has plenty of hiding places for the babies. If I was to move the female, it might cause stress and I don’t want to cause her any stress this close to birth. If there are any babies when I get up at 5:30 am, I am going to move mommy and daddy to the other tank while I safely move the babies into the breeding box, and then I will put mommy and daddy back in the tank. The tank is a 5 1/2 gallon tank, so this is just the easiest way I can do this. What do you think? How will I know when she will drop her fry? Are there any other signs to let me know how long she might have left?
- I have guppies, mollies, neon tetras, a betta, and a bristle nose pleco in my 55g and the top 1/2 of the tank is empty 99% of the time. Any suggestions? I was thinking about grabbing a few hatchetfish but I don’t have a lid on my aquarium! My filters are on the side of the aquarium not the back so the lid won’t fit… do I need to make a custom lid? Or is there a surface level fish that won’t jump?
- is he getting fed enough, they often starve to death, need algae pellets and some blanched cucumber or squash, they also like to chew on a piece of drift wood.
- yeah he’s super healthy. I drop algae and shrimp wafers in there nightly. Gonna throw some squash in there also. But I’ve had him since probably 2012-13. He’s just always been a dick to other fish.
- A common Pleco needs to be in a much bigger tank. I have a Bristlenose which can only get to 6″ and those are okay for smaller sized tanks. Hope this helps!
- I don’t see anyone being mean, just telling the OP why he’s behaving like that. It’s like if someone posted a picture of their cat locked in a small cage, saying their cat is grumpy, people would let them know.
- Tank looks a little small for the inhabitants and they’re just muscling for their favorite spot in the tank. Catfish love to hide and spots as they are nocturnal. Most people do not know that picasimus is a catfish. It’s also called an armored catfish.
- This tank is undersized for each fish in this tank, and having all the fish together in it is even worse, theres zero hiding spots as well, to keep all the fish in this tank properly, you should have them in least a 75g tank. AT LEAST!! I’m surprised anyone is still alive, the water looks murky as hell, probably from having big fish in a small tank, especially since these said fish are only going to get bigger.
- the synodontis was a mistake. Not gonna lie. It was sold as something else and if I would have known how big they got I wouldn’t have got it. The pleco has been with me since 2012-13 if he overgrows this tank I will give him to my LFS but he hangs out on the back of the rock insert. The parrot has a hiding place on top of the rock that he seems to enjoy. I know it’s not ideal for some of the fish in there but I check the parameters weekly and do regular water changes to keep them happy. I had a 72g bowfront but it didn’t fit in my current house so I gave it to my friend. Just doing the best with what I’ve got. The clown loach and synodontis will go to my friend when they outgrow this tank.
- Is that a bicher in there? Also the only problems I see you might have is your air bubbles on the back. Most people like to fill their tank up where they cannot see the water line and having your bubbles in the back most tops of tanks are open in the back and it will spray a mist out as the bubbles pop on the top of the water.
- New to a fish tank and pregnant fish
Is this normal for my pregnant fish she was getting harassed by males so put her in here but she is just sat at the bottom Thankyou - I haven’t had guppies in years and there wasn’t so much wonderful info about them online as there is now. This post had me wondering if pregnant guppies need specific nutrition so I just looked it up and found this. Lots of good info here.
- I have used a breeder box before and they do work but does cause stress on the female..you should see baby fry in the bottom any minute now.
