The photo is of a mature Black Sailfin Molly. What doesn’t show well in the photo is the thin orange stripe on the top edge of his dorsal fin.
We started raising mollies commercially in 1998, starting with Gold Sailfins, Red Leopard Lyretails, and Poecilia latipinna, San Antonio River. During some of my crosses using these three lines of fish, I got a few Black Sailfin mollies and decided to develop the strain. To improve the dorsal fins, I crossed the black ones with P. latipinna, Coleto Creek, whose males hold their dorsal fins up most of the time. I’ve also crossed them with P. velifera and P. petenensis, two other wild sailfin mollies. In every case of mating with wild sailfins I had to inbreed to recover the nice black velvety color.
Once the black color is set after an outcross to a wild molly, the strain becomes almost true breeding, although often the fry are more gray than black before becoming solid black while maturing. In every generation there is a small percentage of fish that are Marble Sailfins but are usually have more than 90% black coverage. Some of the fish have silver instead of black eyes. I’ve toyed with the idea of trying to set that characteristic.
Currently, I’m selecting for large size while maintaining good fins, solid black coloration, and an orange dorsal stripe.
Chris Stevens says
So does the black strain occurs naturally in wild sailfin mollies or is it because of the trio of colors you started with? Beautiful molly in the picture.
charles says
I know of no solid black naturally occurring Black Mollies, but there are wild populations of Poecilia latipinna, P. petenensis, and P. velifera with black spotted fish, usually male. Black mollies were developed by taking these naturally occurring black spotted fish and selecting for more and more black. In our case, we started with black fish that appeared from the Red Leopard Lyretail Mollies we got from the Far East and crossed them with P. latipinna from the San Antonio River in Texas. We simply selected for the blackest fish each generation until we had a solid black fish.
JOSEPH says
Need to purchase X Large Black sailfin, how?
Thanks,
Charles Clapsaddle says
Joesph, We are just rebuilding our breeding colony. It’ll be next year before we have any to sell.
Charles
Lisa says
The picture of the black sail fin Molly looks as if it has ich or white spot on him , I do hope you are treating him. He is a beautiful specimen
charles says
Lisa,
Those are normal light colored spots on the scale margins. It’s difficult to take photos of black fish. The camera insists on flashing, which makes these light spots show up brighter than they actually are. Note the same effect on the edge of his pectoral fin. Mollies are very resistant to Ich (Ichthyophthirius multifiliis), but in this case he definitely does not have Ich.
He is a very nice specimen.
Charles
Roger Potter says
Thank you for sharing the work you put into the wonderful big mollies and the ones you are working on. The blue will really be a great color ,I think the male in the picture looks great.
I am hoping to acquire a trio of the big black sailfin mollies .
Many Thanks for sharing all that you do.
charles says
Roger,
Hurricane Harvey set us back a lot. Some of our best breeders took advantage of the 14″ of rain that fell into the greenhouses when we removed the greenhouse covers in order to save the structures. The vats’ overflows got clogged with leaf debris blown in and the vats overflowed allowing our more adventurous fish to swim out. They remained in the greenhouse floor gutters (the vats sit in 6″ of water) and sumps, but are largely useless for breeding once mixed with other strains. We are trying to capture some of the better males, but the females have likely mated with other males and since they can store sperm for months, we can’t use them for breeding. We’ve reestablished breeding colonies with the fish that didn’t escape.
Charles
Robert LaValle says
Do you have black l sail fin mollies for sale?
Bob LaValle
Charles Clapsaddle says
Robert,
Not at this time. We just completed renovating our livebearer greenhouse and setting up breeding colonies. It’ll probably be in the spring before we are ready to release any sailfin mollies.
Charles
Ann Watson says
Hi, I have beautiful mollies that started with 1 balloon molly and 1 black molly. I have at least 3 sailfin mollies. 2 males, are in a 30 gallon tank with 7 females. So far we have had over 200 fry. I have a 20 gallon tank with about 100 fry from same mother. Anyway I am telling you this because of my black mollies. I had one that was all black including his eyes. I don’t get alot of black mollies. ( I was glad because I don”t like the males they are mean.) Maybe I will try and get a male and female black molly to breed. I can go back 4 generations for these fish, if you are interested in any. I have been giving them to people. The last 200 went to pet stores.(free) I just can’t keep up with keeping the tanks clean. I do them every other week. Let me know if you are interested.
Charles Clapsaddle says
Ann,
Sounds like an interesting group of fish. I haven’t noticed black molly males being especially aggressive, but strains do differ. I go back and forth on whether I like prefer black or silver eyed black mollies. Both are interesting. We aren’t acquiring any fish at this time because we are still rebuilding from Hurricane Harvey. Perhaps next spring or maybe some readers might like some,
Charles
Gary Glick says
Do you have a current listing of mollies for sale with pricing (delivered)? Thanks
Charles Clapsaddle says
Gary, We will be offering mollies again as they recover from the Texas Winter Storm. That will probably start in January.
Charles
Gary Glick says
Looking for black latippina sailfins or black velifera sailfins.
Charles Clapsaddle says
Gary,
We lost almost all our Black Sailfins (Poecilia velifera and P. latipinna hybrids) in the Texas Winter Storm. We should have some available next summer.
Charles