Conditions for breeding mollies/platties?

[DrNic]

What are the best conditions for breeding mollies/platties? Water temp? hardness?

My tank is a planted 20G and has 3F platties, 2M mollies, 1F molly and 1 panda cory. I am pretty sure that at least one of the platties already dropped fry however I think they were eaten by someone else in the tank.

I can now see that the platties and molly appear to be pregnant. I would like to put them into a livebearer trap that I have but I don't want to stress the fish. Any suggestions on how to pull this off? Once I have fry I will move them to a grow out tank to ensure they don't get eaten.

Thanks for the help.

[Mvjnz]

They will usually breed if provided with water and food:)

I don't recommend using breeding nets/traps because they stress out the fish. Just get heaps of plants so the fry can hide in them after birth, then if you want move the fry to the breeding net. They can stay there for a week or 2 before needing something bigger.

Livebearer fry is usually big enough to eat crushed up flakes immediately, but they will grow extremely slowly on that diet, so I recommend getting some freeze dried blood worms which you crush up and give them at least twice a week, in addition to flake food.

I would also recommend a ratio of 1 male to 2-3 females, because the males constantly harass the females.

And by the way, cories are schooling fish, so you should really get another 5 of them.