i placed a male guppy in an aquarium with a female balloon molly and the guppy kept dancing and chasing her around the tank like what he does to the female guppies......can they possibly produce an offspring...?
2007-04-12 15:13:12 · 6 answers · asked by Anonymous in Pets ➔ Fish
The chances of the guppies and mollies reproducing is very rare, although it has been done. Since mollies and guppies themselves are forms of Xbreeds, even if fry were born, they would not survive long.
Mollies are not pure strains most of the time anyway, unless recently collected. According to Lothar Wischnath in 1989, three of the Poecilia (formerly Mollienesia) - sphenops, latippina and petensis contributed towards the early domestic mollie strains. More recently velifera was introduced to develop the high-finned strains.
If you are looking for images of Mollie and guppie crosses, the old Innes book published a picture of a guppy x mollie cross. In Wischnath's Encyclopedia of Livebearers (TFH 1989) on page 274 there is a P. reticulata x P latipinna cross which looks like a gray mollie with guppy-like fins. Aqualog's All Livebearers and Halfbeaks, edited by Kempkes and Schafer, has a color image on the right bottom corner of page 167. There are faint colors in the fins, which echo what one might find in a male guppy.
rare as it may be, Female mollies are not specifically attracted to male guppies. Male guppies however are known to be sneaky.
if they do mate, yes they can have guppie x mollie fry. Some Specialists claim this happens moor often than not yet the fry are eaten before noticed by the keepers.
2007-04-12 15:55:07 · answer #1 · answered by danielle Z 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
They could possibly produce offspring. Guppies can be sneaky and may get the molly pregnant. As these are two different species, they will most likely produce sterile offspring. However, as one of the flukes of genetics, as long as the babies are born with an even number of chromosomes, they will be fertile. Unfortunately, there is no way to test this on your fry, so you will just have to wait and see!
2007-04-12 17:49:39 · answer #2 · answered by fgcuchica 2 · 0⤊ 1⤋
In theory they could. Many, many people have tried but there has yet to be a documented case of a guppy/molly cross or "Golly" as the term goes. They would of course be a hybrid and possibly sterile, but beyond that I personally don't believe in hybridizing fish if it can be avoided.
EDIT: I stand corrected. A Russian Study published in the Brazilian Journal of Genetics , 1996, 19:231-235 shows that such a hybrid is possible, but very rarely will viable offspring be produced and the vast majority of those are sterile.
Sorry for the error
MM
2007-04-12 15:24:06 · answer #3 · answered by magicman116 7 · 2⤊ 2⤋
Probably not. If you would like to try some selective breeding try a mix of Sword-tails and Platys,it's possible that the Young will be fertile,and some interesting combinations are possible.
2007-04-12 16:06:23 · answer #4 · answered by PeeTee 7 · 0⤊ 1⤋
never heard of that - but it's possible
2007-04-12 15:17:38 · answer #5 · answered by Shark 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
if they have babies it will be a hybrid. hybrids can not produce babies.
2007-04-12 15:16:30 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 1⤋