We got this very nice Poecilia latipinna during a recent collecting trip to Mustang Island. I wrote about the trip in a previous blog. Pictured is a young male and a young female. The male will undoubtedly be spectacular when he matures. The other young males collected are just as nice. They are ... Read More
mollies
Collecting Trip to Mustang Island
Recently my family rented a house on Mustang Island at Port Aransas, Texas for a family outing. Mustang Island is a barrier island just north of and similar to the more famous Padre Island. While there, I managed to arrange a quick collecting trip to two sites. The first was a bayside sand flat and ... Read More
Pigeon Blood Sailfin Molly
The photo is of a mature female Pigeon Blood Sailfin Molly. This is a domestic (commercial) molly strain we developed in 1999 while our hatchery was still in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The strain resulted from a cross of Poecilia latipinna, San Antonio River, a population of wild sailfins I collected ... Read More
Green Sailfin Molly
The photo is of a mature male Green Sailfin Molly. This is an aquarium strain fish we’ve been working on for quite some time. To develop this strain, we have crossed three wild sailfin mollies, Poecilia latipinna, P. petenensis, and P. velifera and have selected for large, colorful males. We ... Read More
Black Sailfin Molly
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 ... Read More
Young Pair Goldwag Sailfin
The photo is of a young pair (about 3 months old) of our Goldwag Sailfin Mollies. This strain was one of the first we developed from a cross in 1998 of a male Gold Sailfin Molly we bought from a customer in Albuquerque, New Mexico with female Poecilia latipinna, San Antonio River which I had ... Read More
Poecilia gillii, La Marguerita, Panama
This is one of the wild short fin mollies (non-sailfins) we just processed. We got this fish at the American Livebearer Association’s 2012 convention auction in Florida. They were sold by John Boylan who collected them February 27, 2009, at La Margarita, Panama. Here’s what John recently wrote me ... Read More
Green Lyretail Sailfin Molly
Ashley and I processed the Green Lyretail Sailfin Mollies today. This a is relatively old strain of ours, having been developed in the late 1990s by crossing some Red Leopard Lyretail Mollies from an Asian farm with Poecilia latipinna, San Antonio River, which we had collected in 1998. As usual ... Read More
Fish Photography
Today I finished (a day before deadline) an article on lyretail mollies for my column in Tropical Fish Hobbyist (TFH) magazine. Unfortunately, I still have to take photos of the mollies. I’m not a photographer and my editor and her staffers at TFH insist on what I deem “artistic” photos. Whereas I ... Read More