Urgent Help! Molly is viciously attacking!

[NinjaNomad196]

My molly sometimes attacks my platy and guppy around feeding time.

Now she does all day! She keeps headbutting my platy, but the guppy dodges due to speed. Any help? I always clean, keep water/tempature levels, yadda yadda. Is she possibly pregnant? Had her about a month, platy a year, guppy 6 months. It's a 10g. Can I somehow stop her? I keep the lights off for now, as I don't want my fish hurt.

 

[sabrinarichard]

How much mollies in the tank ? Male vs female ? That might be the problem, not enough of its sort to play around with, also, in my experience, some fish are just jerks..

 

[henningc]

If it is a male that could explain a lot. Male livebearers kept in small numbers tend to be a little aggressive with out females. As stated above, this individual may just be a real jerk. The platy may be prego and the molly is looking for soe fast food-fry. Try putting a mirror up against the side of the tank and see if the image of the molly gets attacked. If so you just have a problem child.

One problem is a 10gal is too small for a molly regardless of type. Mollys also need salt content and veggie foods as a staple diet.

 

[ScotJudd]

Hi. Three different type of fish was always going to be a problem.
Personally I would isolate the Molly in a large net for a week. Put a little gravel in the bottom to weight it and stop it from collapsing. Give it a chance to calm down and for your other fish to 'recover'.
Then try again. If no joy then I would swap out the Molly for a guppy or platy.
Best of luck. Steve.

 

[mattcham]

Mollies form a pecking order. If you have only one molly it will try to dominate other fish. That's normal behavior don't blame the fish. Females do this to prevent other females from gaining access to the best males. Males do the same thing to keep other males away. There is usually an alpha male and alpha female. The hierarchy may change whenever the alpha is weakened by stressors such as birthing, disease, or old age.

Even if there is no male, a female will exert dominance to establish a hierarchy. This is all driven by instinct rather than intelligence. My mollies try to dominate my dwarf cichlids too.

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