Leave for the weekend and fry appear!!!!

[ares]

My friend just got a tank. Had it running for awhile and bought 2 mollies. She was gone for the weekend and when she returned there were aroun 8-10 fry in her tank. She bought some fry food, but I'm just wondering if there is anything else she needs to do? Can she leave them in her tank with the other fish or does she need to move them into a different tank. I have a small 2 gallon that isn't being used for anything, what do you suggest? Also, our winter break is coming up, so we will be gone for about 3 1/2 weeks. We both have automatic feeders for the fish, but will the fry be ok. Should she take them home with her or can the stay in the tank and live even without fry food. I've never bread fish so I really don't know anything about fry.

[robertmarda]

I have been breeding mollies for about 10 months now. I have never fed them anything other than the normal flake food I give their parents. I just crumble it up and put it in the tank.

Unless you have a lot of places for the fry to hide they will eventually get eaten by their parents. What I have done is divided my 10 gallon tank with a divider I bought from the store and on one side I have my pregnant fish with lots of floating plants and on the other side I currently have baby silver lyretail mollies and red wag swordtails.

You may want to divide the tank. Then you don't have to worry about making sure the new tank is stable before winter break. The baby mollies should be fine with the automatic feeder as long as it can put the food out in smaller quantities than for the parents and a little more frequently. Ours usually get fed about 3 to 4 times a day.

Also if they fry have to come out of hiding to get their food then they will be risking becoming food. I don't have an automatic feeder so I don't know how they place the food in the tank.

[ares]

Moving the fry to the smaller tank wouldn't be a problem though considering it's been up and running for a couple weeks. I just haven't bought any fish for it because I'm going to be gone so I'd rather not have to worry about it and just buy them when I get back. I don't thing that the auto feeder would put in enough food for the fry. It only feeds about twice a day. Would that be enough? I'll talk to her about dividing her tank. We're both on a pretty tight budget. Are tank dividers very expensive. I've never looked into buying one.

[robertmarda]

Twice a day could be enough. I've never tried it and have read that fry need to eat more often than grown fish.

With the tank already set up (and I forgot you said you only have 8 or 10 fry) and that few of fish you might be ok putting them in the 2 gallon tank.

I'm a bit hesitant to tell you to do this since I had a bad experience with algea in a 2 or 3 gallon tank. I couldn't keep the algea under control, but that was my first time setting up such a small tank so I don't have experience in that area.

Another thing is that a tank doesn't get cycled until after you place a fish or two in it and so there may not be a well established biological filter in the tank. If the ammonia shoots up too fast you could lose fish before the bacteria get the toxins under control.

A divider for a tank can cost anywhere from $10 to $20 depending on the size of your tank. Just make sure the automatic feeder can deliver food to both sides if you choose this option.

[CRaZeeeBiTcHisH]

if you only have 8-10 fry, i would think they would be fine in the 2 gallon as long as everything else is taken care of, such as food ...they would be a lite bio load as long as they are not overfed, so the bio filter should develop without any casualties...as for feeding the little buggers, they preferably should be fed several times more a day than adult fish, but they certainly will not starve if fed twice a day....if you decide to go the other way, with a tank divider, you have a little more security in that in an established tank they should have plenty of tiny spots of algae and such to much on in between feedings...easiest way to make fry food is to take flakes , put in a ziplock, make the flakes into a powder and feed--remember , they are TINY, so they don't need much food...watch and make sure they eat what you feed them, and be especially careful if you put them in the 2 gallon...