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Balloon Molly Fry

23 11:29:29

Question
I have a 20, 10, 5, and 2 gallon tanks.  I recently (5 days ago) bought 3 balloon mollies, 2 of the are females.  I've read that these fish typically give birth prematurely if you move them to a new tank, so I assume that is what happened.

Anyways, I put them in my 20 gallon tank with some white clouds, and long finned danimos. Yesterday morning I noticed a few fry in the tank so I stuck five of them in my 2 gallon tank that I had my african dwarf frog located in.  I put the frog back into the 20 gallon tank, just in case he would eat them.

This morning I woke up to a new batch of fry, I would say about 30 of them.  I managed to get about 20 of them out.  I also took out the danimos because they were eating babies faster than I could catch the babies.  I'm sure that these were a new batch because I did check the tank about 3 times during the day yesterday to see if there was any fry I missed.

The scary part is that my two balloon mollies look as prego as ever!  I'm guessing that both of them gave birth but I'm not sure.  

Questions:
1. Do you think both of them gave birth?
2. Do you think they will give birth again this month? (should I put them in a separate tank?)
3. What size tank do the babies need?  
4. Will the african dwarf frog eat the babies?  He is pretty slow..
5. Will the mollies eat the babies?  They seem pretty uncoordinated,  I didn't witness any attempts to eat fry.
6. Could I get a salt and pepper cory for the babies tank for cleaning or would you recommend a snail?


I have raised african dwarf frogs from eggs before, so I'm not at all worried about taking care of the current fry, they all appear to be doing well.

Thank you!  

Answer
1. well when they give birth they usually go really thin, like back to there normal size or thinner! so its weird they still look pregnant but yeah they can give birth roughly every 4-5 weeks just from mating once! they can store sperm but it wont last forever

2. answered that in 1. :)

3. any will do..mollies grow slowly but ive found the more space they have and the better the water quality the quicker they grow (oh and also what you feed them)

4. no idea..he may do, but im not sure

5.they are known to eat the fry yes..but occasionally you get some fish that dnt..you just have to wait and see!!..not all the babies will survive though..the reason they have sooo many is because between 0-10 usually survive

6.usually cleaning fish are ok with fry so you should be fine :)