How do you distinguish the sex of balloon mollies?

Question

IF you cant judge by the fatness how can you? And the whole fin thing is really confusing. Try to make it easy for a 12 year old to understand, yes i am 12

Answer 1

The fin thing is easy - it just takes a while to get use to it.

And it's a little harder to do on ballong bellies - but it can be done.

Males have more like a stick fin. It's a long line.
Females have a normal looking round kind of fin.
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Great picture for reference:
http://www.petsolutions.com/Images/200/10510.jpg

Males also, like in the picture, have a much larger colorful top fin. It is not always the case tho.

Answer 2

The male has a pointed anal fin and a much larger dorsal fin and the female has a more rounded anal fin and pregnancy spot. Sorry, sexing fish is a difficult proposition at times. Depending on the fish, such as goldfish, it can even be difficult for experts. Like you have experienced, it's easy to write down on paper, but not so easy to do in real life. Don't feel badly. It's not a 12 year old thing, even adults have a difficult time sometimes. The best way is to go to pet stores and ask someone who is knowledgeable to walk you around and physically show you the difference. That makes the process a lot easier when you see the real thing.

EDIT: How about this? Here is a YouTube link that shows lyretail mollies. As far as the tail dilemma goes, this video will work. It's the same difference. See some of the black fish (mollies) have pointed tail fins, while some of them just have the plain, round tail fin? Those with the pointed tails are male, those with the round tail are female. I hope this helped!

Answer 3

Make sure you are looking at the right fin to tell them apart. It's not the fin at the back of the fish, not the tail fin. It's the small fin up under the fishes belly

Here's a picture of a male molly almost at the bottom of the page:

http://www.exiledplanet.org/fish/

Now here's a picture of a female molly at the bottom of this page:

http://www.bbayaquariums.com/black-molly.html

See to last fin under it's belly and how they are different?

This page has a picture of a male balloon belly molly:

http://www.peteducation.com/article.cfm?cls=16&cat=1958&articleid=2617

Hope that helps!

MM