Mystery Babies (now 6 Days Old)

Last Saturday we woke up to babies in our new tank. We are beginners and were not expecting to have babies. The tank had 5 white skirt tetras, 1 dalmatian balloon belly molly. 1 silver hatch fish, 1 tequila sunset guppy, 1 dwarf gourami, and a pleco. The molly died the same day the babies were discovered (seen them in the morning around 8 am) and they were immediately removed. The molly began acting strange, swimming sideways and then went vertical. I knew the water level as kind of off as it was a new cycle but I had been keeping up with daily 10-20 % water changes and the levels were fairly close to where they should be for ph, etc. The molly ended up dying later that evening after a few hours of being vertical. That same night (10 pm) the hatchfish began showing signs of ick so we turned up the heater (I did not have any other tanks for him as the babies were in our QT, and no other fish have died or shown signs of ick). We woke up with the hatch fish (Ziggy) stuck to the filter Anyways, I'm just providing this info so you all know what was in the tank and what could have possibly produced the babies. I think it was the molly because I seen NO eggs from the tetras (they do have eggs visible inside the females) and I observed two pairs of them spawning 1 day after discovering the babies though. Please look at the pictures and let me know what kind they may be. The babies do have a variety of colors already : 7 in total- 1 white/clear color, 2 very dark ones, and 4 that are brownish orange with what looks like stripes. I'm not sure if the molly was male or female, the guppy appears to be male based on my observation of analfin, and I know for sure we have both sexes for tetras.




). I tried to get the clearest pics I could but they are very evasive of my camera. LOL.

 

Too big to be newborn guppies. Either guppy/molly hybrids or mollies.

 

Those are very large fry, with their colors so strong I'm not sure if they are newborns.
They seem to be the balloon molly fry I think.

 

How long have you had the tank? Did you buy the fish yourself, or did you buy the tank as a whole with the fish from someone?

 

Welcome to FishLore! I hope you enjoy the site and find it helpful.

 

How long have you had the tank? Did you buy the fish yourself, or did you buy the tank as a whole with the fish from someone?

We've only had the tank for about 3 weeks. The babies showed up around day 13. The tank was new and we bought the fish from the store.

Welcome to FishLore! I hope you enjoy the site and find it helpful.

Thank you!

Those are very large fry, with their colors so strong I'm not sure if they are newborns.
They seem to be the balloon molly fry I think.

They are about 6 days old. The were born/hatched between Friday night and Saturday morning last week. We have been keeping a real close eye on the tank so I know they were not in there before then. They are growing fast though. They have already tripled in size. I think they are developing little bellies like our molly, which is why they look so big. Plus my pictures are zoomed in to show the detail.