molly breeding

Question
my regular white female molly and white, orange, and male black balloon molly have been breeding for about a week or so. i have done a lot to get them to breed. i started with this other regular male that was black and yellow. he was not that into the breeding, but i did not know it was him and not the female so i got an orange and white balloon molly that was female. this did not work so i waited for a fish to pass to get a new male (keeping the old one). he was the balloon molly i told you was all different colors. right when i let him out of the bag he started breeding with the white female but not the balloon one. that is my first question. the other one is, the white female does not seem pregnant. she does not look fat at all and even though she is a white molly, i see no black spot on her belly. i have herd you are supposed to put some aquarium salt in the tank with them but this is not possible for me because i have 2 betas (they are female and don't seem aggressive at all towards any other fish)and 2 tetras, one black neon and one pristella i think it is called. i leave the light on in the tank until i go to bed which is around 9:30 or 10:00 and turn it on when i wake up, 6:00 to 9:00 i feed them once a day which is in the morning as with all of my other fish bowls ands tanks. i occasionally give them a snack before i turn the light off. thanks for the help and sorry this is so long.

Answer
Hi Erica!

This may seem like a strange answer but I believe all you need to do is give your Mollies more time.

Sometimes the fish needs to age a bit before they can reproduce and your mollies may even be having small little broods of babies when you are not aware of it and the other fish (including mollies) may be snatching them up before you even see them. I've raised mollies many times before and sometimes they don't look very pregnant at all but will still have small broods of babies when you least expect it.

And male mollies are a bit strange, sometimes they will fixate on just one female. I'm not really sure why they do this maybe its some type of natural selection in their instincts.

Honestly I've never really been able to see a dark spot on a pregnant molly before. Thats usually most visible in guppies it semms.

Aquarium salt is not entirely necessary. A more important key is to keep their water very clean through frequent partial water changes of about 30-50% once a week. Mollies cannot tolerate polluted water very well at all so clean water is a must for their well-being, its even more important than salt. I wouldn't worry about salt.

Also, include vegetable-based foods in your mollies diet. You can buy 'spirulina' flakes or other vegetable based flakes from your petstore that mollies will love! Algae wafers are also a great supplement and mollies enjoy grazing off of them for hours.

Keep plenty of plant cover floating plants and bushy plants in the back (live java moss works well or water sprite) to allow cover for the fry to hide and take refuge from the other fish.

Keep your mollies water clean and keep them well fed and you should get fry very soon!
Susan~