Livebearers and breeder tanks

[situate]

Not a serious devotee, but saw last night that we'd gotten two new baby mollies. A big surprise. They were pretty much ignored by the other fish in the tank, but who knows if there were originally only two. My wife separated them from the other fish in a breeder box inside the 10 gal. aquarium we've got. This morning they seem to be doing ok and we expect them to live. The question I have is how long does one keep them in the breeder box? Thanks for any assistance in this area.

[nimmo]

Congrats on the babies but im afraid the chances are there were probably alot more born that got eaten by some of the hungrier fish in your tank ! On the two you have left you should feed them minutely crushed flake and brineshrimp which will encourage them to grow faster and stronger. Release them when they are about half the size of your adults or when you think they are big enough not fit inside the other fish http://petshub.com/ubb/wink.gif Chances are this will not be your last parenting episode with your livebearers and so you will get to know when they are ready to 'drop' enabling you to save more babies the next time (should you want to) . Good luck!

[Robert Keiger]

This morning I awoke to a tank "full" of new mollies. There are almost seventy of them so I would say that if you only saw two, someone had quite the feast. Mollies generally aren't aggressive fry eaters so you should look to their tankmates for the culprits. Mollies will generally spawn every four to six weeks so you can plan on more in the time frame and be better prepared if you want to keep them alive.