Molly Breeding: Creamsicle Lyretail + Silver Sailfin Lyretail =

[ekfishlover2011]

6 Gold Dust
2 Green
3 Stillborn

How did that happen? My gold dust is female, not pregnant, and different body/fin shape than the rest of my mollies, whereas the mother molly is lyretail, longer fins, and creamsicle, and the father was silver with green/blue shimmer, sailfin, and lyretail. So where did the Gold Dust come in this breeding? I was all excited hoping for beautiful silvers and creamsicles and maybe a few green. Too early to tell if i got any sailfins or lyretails, but the coloring has me completely stunned and confused. I thought i had my gene pool perfect to make brilliant colored huge finned mollies. :( Has anybody done any dabbling in molly genetics to help me figure out the proper mate for the female to make the right fry next time?

By the way by Gold Dust i mean yellow/gold with black half of bodies and tails. Creamsicle i mean bright orange with white bellies. Silver i mean the pure white ones with no spots at all. Ive noticed Google images interchanges some of the color names.

[madagascariensis]

when fish farms churn out fish, they dont really care much about strain purity and stuff like that. it is entirely possible that both mollies may have had gold mollies somewhere in their ancestry and thus contained "hidden" gold dust molly genes.

[ekfishlover2011]

Thanks for the reply! Hmm. That sucks. Maybe if im lucky the green looking ones might turn white as they grow... Is that possible? They were only born today, so i guess there's room for change, right? If i buy the specific ones in pet store labeled silver should they be of purer strain? My silver one came from an "assorted lyretail mollies" tank, so i guess it should have been obvious his genes werent as good as they looked...

EDIT: Especially since he was an obvious mix between lyretail and sailfin i shouldve assumed he wasnt completely pure.

[ekfishlover2011]

One of the three that managed to survive whatever unhealthiness killed them all (probably mostly due to super long term of pregnancy) started as a gold dust but has become a creamsicle as she matured! :D A beautiful coloring too. Her tail is a super huge fan bigger than her mother's. No lyres have developed yet, but they usually seem to be last thing to appear IME. I got a green one that im rehoming that survived, and a beautiful lemon yellow gold dust one. If the green one develops lyres it will stay, but if not i already have two normal green ones and i wont be able to tell them apart when it grows up the whole way. Im just glad that i got one creamsicle. :)