Black Lyretail Mollies (chasing)
 

Hey everyone, I have just started to really get into fish and I have a hopefully simple question. Yesturday I bought 3 Black Lyretail Mollies. As soon as I got home I noticed in the bag that there were about 15 fry in addition. Anyways my main question is, One of the mollies is continuously chasing and possibly nipping at another. It always seems to be the same one chasing the same molly. The third molly just swims back and forth, and seems to be alittle larger than the other two.

Is this normal behavior? or is this molly abusing the other molly?

Thanks

Hello and welcome to the forum!
Well, I guess I can safely assume that at least one of the mollies is a female. Can you tell me what sex the others are? The sex of the one being chased and the sex of the doing the chasing, might prove helpful.

I am not really sure how to tell... here is a discription, the one doing the chasing black, with a larger top fin, and one fin underneath farther forward on the body, and has some yellow highlighting. The other two are solid black, with slightly smaller top fins, and its fins underneath are farther back on the body. So I assume 1 male and 2 females, but again, not sure.

Mollies are easy to sex, when they come of age. The male will have a pointed anal fin, called a gonopodium.

Sorry about that, I should have resized that picture!

yea, its the male doing the chasing, and it seems that he chases them both now after watching for a alittle while. And thanks for the image, that made it very easy to tell.

Boys will be boys! He is trying to mate with the females.
It is recommended to have at least two females per male, to keep the females from being overly harassed and stressed. I have not seen any damage from my males nagging ways, but keep an eye on yours. If one female starts looking terrible stressed, it might help to add an additional female to the mix.

Thank you very much for the help... now if only I knew what to do with the fry... I can see up to 20 now a day later.

Not sure what size tank you have. If the tank is large enough, you can add a fish that will eat the fry.
My mollies are in brackish water with an archer fish. The molly fry, saves me a little money on crickets!
Sometimes the archer Misses a few. When I see the little ones, I always feel the need to rescue. I have 5 fry in a breeders trap now, not sure what I am going to do with them. :|

If you want to keep the fry and have only mollies, put your feet up and relax. Mollies are often quite gentle with their fry. If you do not want the fry, you will need to add in a large fry eater very soon before the fry get too big for a typical fry eater like a gold barb, an angel or a similar fish.