mollie fry

Question
hey haven't asked a question in the while.......all my old mollies died but i have had a new batch for like 1 month now...they are huge....but i was wondering what color or kind they will grow up to be....are all molly fry black when they young........i can see one turning silver but im not sure
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JUST WANTED TO LET YOU KNOW ONLY one fry is still alive...i have it in a different tank but one after another keep dying....the fry has been 3 weeks now....one left and it is kind of big now....how do i keep my LAST ONE alive....oh and my platie and silver mollie are humungous....
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hi again...i got another question...srry if i ask to much but im new to fish...........if there are a lot of red dots under my black molly does that mean its about to lay babies.?........becuase i got home today and it had babies but i was to late to save them....im not sure how much it had but when i got home it was way skinnier then before...... and my mom said she saw a fry but then it got eaten when she came home from work....i was wondering how long birth took since that black molly is still somewhat fat and if it was still not done with its birthing yet...how long does it take for the molly to born all its babies
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oh...will they all turn into balloon mollies...i had no other male baloon molie in my tank but a very sexually active silver male mollie......oh and all my fry died except for 6 cuase they got crushed by the tiny gravel i had in the fry tank
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hi i am a kid whose balloon molly just had babies. My fish never had babies before and its pretty cool. I was wondering what the fry would turn out to be. WOuld they turn out to be balloon mollies or other mollies becuase they dont look like baloon mollies. Also i was wondering how long it would take them to grow atleast bigger then a pebble since they are hard to see in my baby fry tank my mom bought.
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hey FISHMAN! (lol, I understand, I'm a kid too.)

The fry will be balloon mollies. All molly babies look pretty much the same at birth, but they will start to take more of a ballon molly shape when they are older, and they will probably get brighter colored, and maybe some will even get spots or change color entirely.

It will take them a good few months to become an adult, but they will start growing quickly. They will be noticably bigger in about two or three weeks. In six weeks, you can add a filter in your fry tank (you don't need filteration until they are six weeks old).

Just make sure you keep the tank at a warm temperature (around 78 fehrenheit is perfect) and feed them well, and they should grow up nicely. For the first week or so, they are very very tiny and delicate, and you will notice them sort of sleeping on gravel or rocks or plants, but once they are a week or two old they will be swimming around like crazy. by six weeks, they will be about maybe half an inch, give or take a little bit.

Around six weeks is when they can go into the big fish tank, depending on their actual size (make sure they are too big to get eaten or sucked up by the filter, I qwoukld wait until about eight weeks). This is also around the age when you can tell males and females apart, and also your mother fish might be having more babies around this time. Try keeping a calendar next to your fish tank, and mark down the day they were born, so you can keep track of their ages.

Good luck with the new fry! I hope they grow up happy and healthy. =]
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Best wishes, chelsey
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hey FiShMaN! sup?
haha, i have a very sexually active male, too...he fathered so many babies I lost track.

If the female balloon molly that had the babies has been in your tank for longer than a few months, then they will probably be a balloon molly/silver molly mix. But if you just got her, then they will probably be balloon mollies becuase she probably bred with a balloon molly at the pet store. If you got her with in the last few months, you could have a mix of balloon mollies and balloon/silver's, becuase female mollies can store sperm from mating for up to six months.  

Hmm...the babies might not have actually goten crushed by the gravel, but could have died and just sank down to the gravel. just telling you incase you don't know if they actualyl were crushed or not. I would take out the gravel so you know for sure next time.

Good luck with the six remaining babies, and have a happy holiday.
best wishes, chelsey
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Hey Fishman,
(you dont ask too many questions, its better to ask then to go not knowing. =] )

1) red dots aren't good. They are most likely some type of parasite, and you should treat your tank with some parasite killer. There are plenty of medications in fish stores that will help get rid of this, and it shouldn't be harmful if treated right away.

2) normally, mollies have their babies pretty much all at once. I wondered this question before as well, and since then witnessed my mollies giving birth a few times and every time they were all born at once. Within an hour or two, they had them all. She could just be fat from another litter getting ready to come out, they have babies about every one and a half months. It could be possible that she stopped giving birth and would continue later in the day, although I have never seen this happen with my fish. Sometimes I would look in my tank a day after birth and notice more, so it could be that or that the babies are coming out of hiding.

You should try to get something for the babies to be seperate from the adult fish so they don't get eaten. Either add some plants (fake plastic ones work better than real) or get some rocks in a pile with small areas they can hide in. A seperate tank or a baby saver net work better, though. Not too many babies will make it to adult hood in the same tank as adult fish. =]

Good luck with the babies,
chels
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hey fishman,
i answered this question but it didn't get sent =[ i just got an email telling me all this crap how it never got sent. idk the site is having "technical difficulties".

but anyway, what is your tank set up? waht temperature is it set at, what are you feeding the fry, and do you have a filter running?? do you use water conditioner when adding water?

you molly and platy are probably going to have babies soon so be on the look out!

try to give me some clues on your tank so I can help you out on how to keep him and any new arrivals alive. =]

good luck with the new ones!
chels

Answer
most molies change color as they grow up.

not entirely, like from black to orange, but normally they become brighter and sometimes will get spots.
Most of my fry start off a sort of ugly grey color but they end up turning prettier when they age a little. I have had mollies change from the grey to an orange or a black, but its not a common thing to happen.

good luck with the new babies!