Looking For Help To Identify Fry, Possibly Hybrid?

HI everyone, I just joined looking for an active forum that can help a friend and I figure out what exactly she has in her community tank.

She has a gold dust and black Molly, and Pygmy Corydora community tank with only one female black Molly that she has identified. they originally shared a tank with guppies at the LFS and since molly females can store sperm we're questioning the paternity of the fry dilemma.

breeding history is the female did have 5 offspring that are about 5 months old now and are all black. but now my friend has suddenly been over run by a mass of Fry that showed up out of no where. the fry have grown and we can't figure out what they are. the female had fry 3 weeks prior to these guys showing up and they were mostly eaten. we are fairly certain the new batch couldn't possibly be that female's offspring. my friend is certain that the one black molly is the only female in the tank.

the new fry are about 2 months old now (and over due to be moved to a new tank which is my fault), and the reason we're stumped on their identity is because they look different from the mollies, and are more transparent. are these gold dust mollies? is it possible the black molly had more fry after the ones she had 3 weeks prior? so far all the babies she had were all black mollies.

we did find a video about molly fry care and they did look similar to the gold dust in the video except ours are much paler. is that an age thing? my friend had not intended to breed her mollies, but it's what happens when you mix males with a female.

we had originally thought my friend's corys had bred and since the fry spent most the time on the tank floor hiding, we had thought she lucked out and bred pygmy corys. obviously that is not the case.

i'm adopting the majority of the fry from her and help her cut down the tank size to fish population ratio to much more manageable number and make it better for all (fish and fish owner alike). so we'd like to know what the heck we have here. I definitely will have to change my original plans and get a larger tank and accommodate for the potential of accidentally breeding more Mollies. especially since far more of the fry survived than expected, her tank had a lot of hiding places and the sheer number of fry caught her by surprise.

i'm used to dealing with flamboyant and high maintenance Betta than I am with Mollies so i'm at a loss and tried looking up everything I could to figure out our mystery of the population boom.

these are the photos she sent me, the marking of which was the corys was for me.

 

Those are mollies. Without culling them out they will look more and more like wild caught mollies. That's why only a few look like mom.

 

Line breeding livebearers is tough. You end up with far more culls then keep able fish.

 

I don't know the genetics or development of Gold Dust in Mollies, but those fry are mostly Gold Dust Mollies. If her Gold Dust is a male, it is likely that he fertilized a batch of young from the Black, and this could have produced the Gold Dust fry. The other possibility is that her adult Gold Dust Molly is another female, and dropped a bunch of young. Photos of the adult Gold Dust could help resolve this question.

The pale color could be a dietary problem, as in they are lacking certain nutrients to produce a richer gold.

 

Thanks, guys, my friend has told me she now regrets getting the mollies, she underestimated their breeding capabilities.

As far as she can tell only the one molly is female, she triple checked since yesterday. unless of course one of the "male" are actually drag-kings. we basically are confused because the one female had young just before these new fry appeared and with no other female that my friend is aware of the batches of fry are too close in timeline given gestation is anywhere between 30-60 days.

dietary makes sense, since she wasn't planning on breeding or prepared for that matter it is not surprising the fry haven't gotten any special dietary needs. she would have separated them all but she had no other tank. now that a good number of them survived she's sort of in panic mode due to them getting bigger and no one other than me is willing to adopt them. gonna convince her to get a secondary tank to separate females.

since i'm adopting the majority of the fry any recommendations for me to get their dietary needs up to par and get them to their golden hue? never had mollies before so I'll take all the advice. I know i'm definitely going to need to keep track the number of females I end up with and get them separated.

definitely going to need to get a much bigger tank than planned to prepare for a molly invasion.

 

going make a amendment here, I checked with her regarding the colour being due to diet, she did change the feeding to include fry food. they get any where from fish flakes, fry food, and algae wafers. occasionally betta pellets and bloodworms but not regularly. they've eaten far more in the last 5 months than her bettas have eaten in 2 years. her first time having mollies and even with her own researching she definitely was not prepared for the outcome

 

I don't keep livebearers without some predatory fish in the tank. They are a hassle lol.

 

yea turns out my friend tried the "don't feed the adults for a couple days to cull numbers" and her mom went "aw look at the babies, let's keep them" and proceeded to feed the adults

my friend is trying to get a count on the new gold dust fry to try and see how many are female and just how dire the situation is going to be, she's having difficulty as the analfins are all transparent. they could be stressed since there is so many in the tank, I suggested getting another tank to separate the fry and see if that helps with their colours

 

It can take a few months before the sex is evident in Mollies. All are born as females with analfins, but the male's analfin changes to a gonopodium as they mature.