One of the dangers of discovering that we had black molly fry is knowing when to release them into the main tank. This past weekend, we took the major step of releasing the oldest ones into the main tank. The fry are about half the size of our guppies, so they’re decent sized though still small compared to the adults.
We released one and it survived 24 hours, so we released the others of the same size. Most of them came through and are still alive. One unfortunate soul, however, made the mistake of straying too far away from cover and ended up surrounded by four adults, who started lunch. I managed to scare them off and grab the fry in the net. He went back into the floating box, but overnight he developed some fungus, a common problem with open wounds on injured fish.
I don’t want the fungus to spread to anyone else in the tank, so I went out this afternoon and bought a small 5 gallon tank to use as a hospital for now, and probably for a nursery later. Malachite green is not something I want mucking up my big tank. Hopefully this will at least knock out the fungus.
She took a real beating, though. She lost most of her right pectoral fin, much of her tail, and most of the scales behind the anal fin. Hopefully she lives, but she’ll be crippled her entire life. She’s already learned how to navigate with only one pectoral fin bu bending her tail to compensate. It’s clear she’s in a great deal of pain, though.
