For Fryin out Loud

[PaulO]

So this all starts about 4-5 weeks ago, I was planning to put my female bettas in a 10 g (divided) and so I bought 2 mollies then gradually added1 about every week and a half to have the grand total of 4 which is all i'm going to have. I have a 10 gallon with an aqua-clear 30 for 10-30 g aquariums. So here I was all happy and somewhat aware that I was going to have fry because the mollies did have bulging bellies....well turns out one of them decided to release a few fry today and I am pretty much drowning in panic. I was planning on a 2.5 with a sponge filter but now I don't know. I need help on all fronts, I need to find a good quick setup and get these fry out before they are eaten. ( I am currently keeping them in the cups my bettas were in so its pretty much 10 fry to a cup...at the moment. Pretty much what am trying to say is....S.O.S I made the room the tank is in as dark as possible and turned off the aquarium lights to raise the fry's survival rate (I already watched one get gulped down as soon as it entered the world, and now I am kinda depressed. Anyways I'll try to evac. as many fry as possible but I need options people...pronto, please. I expected the fry to maybe appear in about 3 weeks by which I would be ready but this is a full on surprise attack. Well thank you for reading this post I apologize if you've lost 20 years of your life trying to get through it and thank you.

[mursey]

You want to save your fry? Damn, I want to get rid of mine. (Platy fry) Want about 10 of them? :)

[PaulO]

Not that I want to save them just I need a way to maybe let them mature and pass them out to people. I NEED ADVICE PLEASE ANYONE?!! I would have taken your fry maybe a few weeks from now if I didnt have this problem. I know somewhat what to do but I just wanna make sure that I get the room needed, temp, and food under control. Guess instead of breeding bettas like I thought of (somewhat as a joke between my parents and I)I'll be stuck caring for molly fry for the next decade because I read these dang fish can wait for the opportune moment to drop. I think theres a meme about I'm feeling right now...

[mursey]

Well, even though I didn't want mine I didn't have the heart to let them all be eaten. I did scoop them out and stick them in a small bowl with an air stone at first. They were so small I didn't use a filter at first and I just had to be very very careful when trying to clean their bowl with my turkey baster that I did not suck them up.

Actually, I did suck them up on purpose with the turkey baster at first to get them out of the tank with their mom and my betta Cornelius because he was trying to eat them and I felt sorry for them. I did that and also tried to make catch them with little plastic cups.

All you can do is either stick plants like anacharis or . . is hornwort or camboba that has fry-friendly shapes? I think so. I also put very tiny decorations with hidey holes that no other fish could get to in the tank with the pregnant mom. She has had 3 sets of fry already and she's still totally fat so I know it will happen again. (Jeez!)

Um. . . not sure what else your questions are? I went on a tangent so maybe I didn't help at all!

Also I do have 2 decorations that scream "fry can hide in here". I had 2 pretty Bioorb decorations that didn't seem right for betta but very good for fry to hide in. I have these but you could get something similar instead:

http://www.warehouse-aquatics.co.uk/...sea-lilly.html

http://www.warehouse-aquatics.co.uk/...e-sea-fan.html

Your thread title is really funny, btw.
I think the airstone at least made sure there was oxygen in the bowl, and I bought hikari first bites to feed them.

[PaulO]

hanks for your reply. I was asking what ideal water temperature, ph, food, gallons would be ok. I currently have 8 but I know that when I wake up tomorrow I'll be looking at at least another 2-8...*sigh* If anything I will probably get a 2.5 or 5 whichever would be better and just work with that. Well anyways time to steal some floating plants from my betta tanks (I hope they will forgive me being feisty fish...fin and all) btw I was going to use a turkey baster to suck them up :P but I thought it would b too streeful so I just painstakingly relocated the one by one...took a while. I could not believe how fast these little suckers can swim. Oh and yeah I figured I might add a little humor in the title to lighten up this post.

[mursey]

I too thought using the turkey baster was messed up, but the last few were so hard to get I just got obsessed!

[PaulO]

yea I don't blame you, tricky little ones aren't they. Luckily all my fry were hanging out on the surface so I just put the cup in the water, pushed it in for some suction and just scooped out 2-3 at a time :P. Btw good luck with your next batch...at this point you must be feeding them to a cat or to some chichlids or something :P.

[mursey]

Ha! I am going to put an ad on Craigslist soon I think. They are taking up a tank I need for one of my tailbiting bettas. Plus I am likely moving soon and don't need to take them with me, I'll have enough problems!

Edit:

Actually I forgot I told my sister I was going to dump them into the plant tank at Petco when no one is looking.

[PaulO]

Lol that is evil .. just if you were to do it make sure you can very discreetly get a water sample and check ph, I know mollies like a ph of 7.5 - 8/8.5 ish but I have no idea about what fry like or platy.

[PaulO]

Update: At around 8:30 A.M. I checked the tank for more fry, I rescued one but found the mom dead behind some plants. This is the second of my mollies that died, I'm starting to suspect the other girls in the tank are the culprit. Both times when the mom's looked ready to release the young the other fish would hang around like a pack of demented, cannibalistic groupies. Anyway I wont even bother returning the dead fish, will probably just bury it in the garden under a lavender bush. Don't know if memorials on this site accept mollies, but for a beginners and supposedly easy fish she had one heck of a character. ~R.I.P Marble 9/5/2012 Died in the morning before 8:00 A.M.