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Okay, call me a noob, but I need help!
I have tried (very unsuccessfully) to avoid livebearers, but, I not have three female swordies and 5 'mollies'.

The question I have is, how do you tell for certain if it is a platy, or a molly? The culprits in question are a little less than an inch in length, and they came from a tank with platies, mollies and swordtails. So they could be pure, or mixes, there is no telling (at least for me) what I ended up with. So anyone have specific characteristics they could point out?? (Livebearers aren't my 'thing' so I'm sorry in advance if this seems stupid/trivial - it's just bothering me - I WANT to know! - I usually with bettas, cories and freshwater gobies ... none of this 'molly/platy/guppy stuff!')

Would pictures help at all? I don't know -
Thank you so much for any help!
~Allison

yes pics would help

Have you tried going to websites that post fishprofiles? They have characteristics of the fish you are talking about. Hope this helps.

i could be VERY wrong, but when i kept livebears (years ago) i noticed platies are rounder than mollies? unless you got the balloon ones. dont quote me on this though

I have both mollies and platties and have found that platys are more round while mollys are more elongated. Here are a couple of links for you. Hope they help.

Platy - http://www.fishprofiles.com/profiles/fw/profile.asp?id=Xiphophorus+maculatus

Molly - http://www.badmanstropicalfish.com/gallery/live_b/latipinna.html

that last blue one is sooooo pretty

In a tank of platies mollies and swords you could have baby platies, mollies, swords, Platy/sword hybrids.


The swordtail babies are easy. They are born with a lot less color than all of those others, and mature into a color. Swordtails are also the largest and fastest growing of those fry choices.

Platies and mollies are born fully colored. Sword mixes will have some with some color and some without.

Platies as mentioned above have a much shorter total length and are rounder.

Mollies are medium length until mature when they lengthen.

I could probably give a name to your mystery fry with pictures.

Koi

Empty chairs at empty tables, the room silent, forlorn.

Okay - really sorry about replying/getting back to this thread. It's been almost near impossible to get a decent shot of any of the fish in question. So sorry in advance for the quality, but ... here they are none of the pictures are really good - and these are the best out of all the pictures I did take (and I took around 100ish)
Ceridwen attached this image:
[img]http://www.fishprofiles.net/attachments/399426.jpg"]

Another:
Ceridwen attached this image:
[img]http://www.fishprofiles.net/attachments/399428.jpg"]

Those appear to be mollies.

They are mollies. As stated above, they are elongated and although the appear 'quite rounded' they appear to be females (although the pics don't really allow to tell)

Four are females, one is a male for certain. Sorry about the quality again - and thank you!!

EDIT: They look like they might have some sail fin molly in there lineage somewhere - they're just weird little things, but it is a relief to know they are actually mollies and not platies. So thanks for all of the help, it's greatly appreciated.

[span class="edited"][Edited by ceridwen 2004-07-24 21:44][/span]