Feeding Mollies
Feeding mollies in captivity is a great art and requires constant attention. If you feed your mollies a normal diet of the typical fish foods available at a variety store, you'll be doomed to stunted mollies. Mollies must have certain foods in their diet if they are to grow at a maximum rate.
Most mollies require algae, preferably Chlorella algae, which are soft and very digestible with an extremely high vegetable protein content, along with crustaceans such as daphnia and brine shrimp, and fleshy meat such as tubifex worms. Though this sounds like a difficult diet to obtain, there are a variety of foods available at your pet shop that supply these requirements.
Gambusia affinis, the best known of all the gambusias, has established quite a reputation for itself in medical and public health circles. Because it has proved to be such an efficient destroyer of mosquito larvae, it has been introduced into no less than 70 different countries to help control these pests. Since mosquitoes carry such dreadful diseases as malaria and yellow fever, spreading them as they bite and suck blood, the gambusia is undoubtedly the most important fish in preventive medicine. It is both hardy and prolific and will live in lakes, ponds, ditches, streams, mudholes, in fact almost any body of fresh water. There are numerous gambusia spread throughout the United States, Mexico, the West Indies, and Central America. Although it is a warm-water fish, special cold-resistant strains have been established as far north as Chicago.
Some gambusia are black spotted, but there is generally so little difference between species that it would serve little value to discuss the distinguishing features of these fish here.
In breeding, they follow the general rules of live- bearers. The optimum temperature for their breeding is about 75°F., but they fare well at 5 or 10 degrees above or below. These fish have a rather fond taste for their own young, so if it is at all possible, separate the female before she is ready to drop her young. Fortunately, the young grow very rapidly, and after the first week or so they are too large for the parent to eat, so the best practice has been to leave them alone with her in a large tank that is densely vegetated and hope that they will last the week. Keep plenty of live food in the tank, also, when there are young fish there.
Mollies has an appetite for almost any live food and they also do very well on the standard prepared foods. Gordon's formula is recommended.
Mollies are very hardy and prolific fish. They are not known to be particularly susceptible to any disease and, barring their ferocious nature, can be classified as very desirable fish, especially for outdoor pools.
In large lakes they are extremely valuable. Their prolificness tends to keep the larger game fish well stocked with live food, while they themselves tend to eat all the undesirable beetles, larvae, and what-have-you that are usually found in most lakes.
