Molly Breeding Habits?

[studmaster]

Good Evening everyone,

I've never sat down and watched my fish as much as I have lately and I think my Molly tank appreciated the water change tonight. For the first time I'm seeing my male dalmation molly chase after the female balloon mollies in my tank.

I know what his intent is (it's always "obvious" with the males), but the two females are acting differently. The one is swimming away....but probably not fast enough and they are coming close to breeding. The other female doesn't swim away, but instead tilts her head up and tail down so that she is almost vertical. I've seen other female mollies do this before and now I'm wondering if that's a sign that the female wants to breed. If it is, the male molly isn't too bright because he rather chase after the one thats playing hard to get.

Has anyone watched their mollies before and can confirm that either way is how they breed? Obviously I know that peg A goes into slot B, but I was just wondering if anybody knew anymore to it?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Zagz]

My female mollies do that when they are wanting to breed. I just assumed that this is how they did it. I keep several females to male ratio as the males exhaust the females quite quickly.

 

[studmaster]

Normally my Male Dalmation Molly doesn't show must interest, but after a large water change to reduce some of the nitrates he all of the sudden became into the mood. I only have a 2 to 1 female to male ratio, hopefully that will be good enough. There are places for the females to hide if they want to, but they don't seem to mind the attention.

 

[hsherman1986]

i have a 2 to 1 ratio with my mollies, and have successfully had 6 babies so far (and i had no idea they were pregnant). I have noticed the tilting vertical is more of a territorial/aggressive behavior. My biggest silver molly did that for a while, and yesterday we had to remove her from the tank to reesablish a pecking order (she was beating the rest of the mollies with her tail during feeding time). I have noticed when they breed, the male will peck at the females underside by the anal fin until she turns sideways, then he will...well, you know. if one female won't turn sideways for him, he will try a few more times, then give up and move on to another female, and make his rounds until one of them will let him "get some" lol.

 

[studmaster]

i have a 2 to 1 ratio with my mollies, and have successfully had 6 babies so far (and i had no idea they were pregnant). I have noticed the tilting vertical is more of a territorial/aggressive behavior. My biggest silver molly did that for a while, and yesterday we had to remove her from the tank to reesablish a pecking order (she was beating the rest of the mollies with her tail during feeding time). I have noticed when they breed, the male will peck at the females underside by the anal fin until she turns sideways, then he will...well, you know. if one female won't turn sideways for him, he will try a few more times, then give up and move on to another female, and make his rounds until one of them will let him "get some" lol.

That's interesting hsherman1986, my one balloon molly kinda pretends to swim away then turns over on her side, while the other one goes vertical, heads up. The one that goes vertical is the smallest fish in the tank and is very peacefull. I think they just both have their own way of "getting some"

Another thing to note is that the balloon molly that goes vertical doesn't get much attention from the male. Do mollies have certain times during a cycle (I don't want to say "of the month") that they are fertile and can the males sense it?

 

[hsherman1986]

i don't know about a cycle, but i have noticed that the males are much more persistant right after a water change, or a few days after she has babies (its like "OOh, your not pregnant anymore...come here!").

If one of your does get pregnant and you can tell (i have a hard time telling when they are pregnant, so I am never really prepared for babies from them), I have had much success with a breeding net (the large one from petsmart) with some plastic breeding grass in the bottom.

I used that method with my platies, once they get kinda square shaped and the gravid spot is quite large, they go into the net until they have their babies, then i removed the babies and put them in a seperate breeding box (at least until my grow out tank cycles), left mom in there for another day or so to recoupe, then she goes back in the main tank.

Right now, I have 6 molly fry and 12 platy fry. All the molly fry were unexpected (the six were from two different births) so not very many survived, but I had good success with the platies. Only one didn't make it out of the 12, and that was because it was a stillborn.

I now have the same plastic breeding grass in the bottom of the molly tank for those unexpected births, since i cannot tell when they are pregnant.