How to Take Care of Baby Black Mollies
Black mollies are a subspecies of the molly fish. Mollies are a live-bearing fish, which means the female's eggs are fertilized internally and she brings them to term there, so she releases live young rather than eggs. Black molly fry require special attention to grow up to be healthy adult fish. Your female black molly is likely to have anywhere between 15 and 30 fry. Unfortunately, as in the wild, some of these will not make it to adulthood.
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Instructions
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Place an aquarium breeder net into your aquarium. The breeder net creates a safe area where the other fish can't get to in which to raise your baby fish. Without the breeder net, the adult fish eat the fry.
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Use an aquarium net to move your pregnant black molly into the aquarium breeder net just before she is due to release her babies. Once she has released all her babies, move her back into the main tank. Make sure to remove any stillborn fry.
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Feed your fry two or three times per day with a mixture of dried fry food and baby brine shrimp. You can use either the instant baby brine shrimp from a jar or live ones.
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Release your baby black mollies back into the main area of the tank once they have doubled in length from their original size. At this point, they are big enough to fend for themselves.
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Tips & Warnings
If you are too late moving your black molly into the breeder net and she releases her young in the main tank, just scoop the babies up with your aquarium net and place them in the breeder net.
If you plan on breeding mollies often, it would be wise to invest in a separate tank in which to keep the fry, rather than using the aquarium breeder net.
If you mix male and female black mollies, they will almost certainly produce babies. If you don't want constant streams of molly fry, it is best to keep different genders separately.
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- Photo Credit Aquarium image by crossgolfing from Fotolia.com
