swords3711

How do I keep my male mollies from fighting? I have an extremely aggressive marble mollie. He fights with almost anything. I tried moving my male midnight mollie but he was too aggressive so I had to transfer it back. He doesn't bother the small yellow male mollie though. Any suggestions?

Chief_waterchanger

The best thing to try before anything else when dealing with aggressive livebearers is to put objects such as driftwood, large pieces of rock, lots of dense plants, etc in that can break up the line-of-sight of the fish.

Fish are very visual creatures, if they can not see another fish from across the tank they will not go across the tank to aggress the fish they can not see.

swords3711

ya i know to do that, but when he found the others, he would chase him out

Chief_waterchanger

To my knowledge and experience they will normally not stop aggressing completely, you can just play defense and add more and more obstacles to the tank or seperate them completely from one another.

swords3711

see i also have a female midnight and marble mollies

Richard

The levels of aggression between male Mollies varies.. sometimes a pair will be constantly battling to establish Alpha-male status in the tank which is pretty normal.. if during those battles though, other fish( female Mollies/other species) are chased and nipped at constantly, then you seriously need to consider giving away one of the males, or upsizing your tank!.. BTW, how big is the tank with your Mollies?.. and what's the Molly male to female ratio in it?

swords3711

i have a 35g tank
i have a male to female ratio for each 2 marble 2 black

Richard

From what you've posted, it seems you have 3 male Mollies in that tank, one of whom( the Yellow) sounds like he's still too young to fight for 'alpha-male' supremacy.. Midnights and Marbles tend to be a lot more aggressive than Yellows at an early age, but having raised several generations of Mollies of all types, I can tell you Yellows inevitably end up being 'boss-fish' over Midnights and more often than not, Marbles, after maturing.. as long as you have at least six mature female Mollies to keep your three males occupied, along with sufficient plants and ornaments to break up the line-of-sight like Chief_waterchanger said, you should be ok.. although the ideal ratio for livebearers is three females per male, I'm assuming your Yellow is still a juvenile, so six mature females to your male mix should be pretty safe.. there'll be the occasional clash, but it shouldn't be anything serious to the point of being life-threatening to any of your males.

You might want to keep an eye on your female Mollies too, especially when they're pregnant.. they can get aggressive towards other females( and sometimes even the Alpha-Male), but thankfully that's only till they've had their fry.

Thought I'd throw this in to illustrate how different strains of Mollies vary in their aggression level.. my livebearer tank in terms of it's Molly population has a Yellow male wearing the crown, and a Midnight nipping at his heels.. I just added a young male Dalmatian Lyre-tail to the mix, and he's already rushing the females three times his size trying to mate with them.. he shows no fear when the other males come around him, which tells me I'm looking at my next 'alpha-male' candidate!

swords3711

i know where your coming from.
that little yellow which is a juvenile, about 9mths old is a little brat
he has found a liking to trying to mate with his sisters and steals from the marble which is the dominant male by far
that male killed off my other marble which i was holding onto for my dad
he is extremely aggressive and territorial
technically i have enough females tho
i hav 1 marble, 2 yellow, 1 midnight, and 2 balloons all female of course
the marble is pinned up in a cage right now
hopefully he'll get used to the other fish but im not counting on it
just curious does anyone know if male marble mollies have yellow fringes on theyre sail fin like mine does

susitna-flower

I think the idea of having mixed groups of mollies is fine if you are not trying to sell them back to a LFS or anything, but for myself I don't want to go to a store and buy a mixed up fish. What I try to do is to have 3 females to 1 male in a tank, if there are other fish in there they are of a different species so there is no fighting.
When I can tell a female is close to giving birth, I move her to a 10 gal tank, and let her have plenty of space by herself, then after put her back. I have several different males, but they are each in a different tank.

swords3711

I love cross breeds because you never know what you're going to get.

Richard

Hey Susitna-flower.. I used to shift my pregnant females to a different tank too, until I realised how much stress a pregnant female actually goes through when you're netting her out.. it actually leads to more still-born fry than if you just leave her in her tank with her regular tank-mates in her comfort zone.. once you have sufficient plants for the newborns to hide in, and you check your tank first thing in the morning( my females tend to give birth overnight for the most part), you'll be able to net the fry across to a nursery tank with little or no damage using a brine shrimp net.