Agressive male molly

[flavia21]

Hello!
I have a black male molly in a 15 gallon tank with other 10 fish ( 2 one inch baby mollies, a white female molly, a platy, 4 neon tetra, and a pristella tetra). My black male molly seems to be aggressive toward my "females" but especially my platy when they are eatting and them constantly afterwards .
What should I do guys?

 

[BlaseMrNiceguy]

Separate him. Just like people every fish has its only personality.

 

[flavia21]

Separate him for good? I didn't wan to separate them because I wanted to have my my white molly bread.
Any other option?
Thanks

 

[tamtam]

There are 2 things that stand out to me that are problems.

First your tank size. Mollies need a bigger tank than that. They actually get rather large and have a pretty big bioload. Something like 30 gallons would be better suited to them.

Next your numbers. General rule of thumb for livebearers is that you should have 2-3 females per male in a tank. To my knowledge platy and mollies can not cross breed with success like some other livebearers(believe all fry will usually die?) but I would imagine that wouldn't stop the male from hassling the platy and trying.

I think the only thing you can do is get more female mollies or get rid of the male. Your tank size isn't big enough to support more mollies though. You could rehome the mollies and get more platies for your tank and breed those.

 

[flavia21]

I have thought of rehoming them but I have little space to get a larger tank. I just got this male molly but I had one before and it never harassed my other fish, it actually died but I'm not sure why. But as for the tank size and the number of fish, they seem happy just the way they are the only problem is the male molly. I have thought of getting a bigger one but I can't at the moment.

 

[Ursi]

I had 2 male mollies, I actually thought one was female, I originally had 3 females to 1 male, 2 females died and I was actually left with 2 males, which then caused a lot of problems for my female balloon mollies. Both my males became such bullies that I had to do something- they needed females, I added 2 new females, and the 2 males constantly harassed those too, I added another 2 females and sent a male back to the shop and the problem was solved. In my opinion if your tank can't hold anymore mollies I would take them back and get some more platys, I found the males will not settle down without the adequate number of females and it will cause the fish it is bullying too much stress.