molly about to give birth in a few days

[alanj]

my molly is about to give birth in a few days, should i turn off the filter? how about the air stone?

[Bristley]

I unfortunately don't know that much about the specifics of breeding fish yet, so I'm only going based on my one time experience so far in this one. My sons Mollies had fry earlier this year. It was completely unexpected as my wife didn't know what to look for and I was out of the country for a couple months while this was all going on. Anyway, she didn't do anything special, no adjustments to filtering or anything, she just kept the tank clean and fed them per the schedule and one day....POP...there came the babies. As far as the filter goes I don't think you would need to turn it off, but maybe you could put some sponge material or the like on the filter suction to prevent any fry from getting sucked in. This would decrease the flow in the tank some though also, so I would wait on doing this until someone else with more experience in breeding can weigh in and give you more specific advice on what you should do.

Also, good luck and hope to see some pics of your molly fry soon.

[rich311k]

No reason to turn off the filter or airstone. The babies are quite large and good swimmers at birth.