# Marble Molly Finally Dropped :D



## Pandapop (Dec 29, 2009)

A little past 3:00pm EST I went about checking all my tanks and feeding my community tanks, when I noticed that the little marble girl, Pebbles, was looking WAY thinner than she should have since she was pregnant. At first I didn't see any fry, then finally, before removing her from the tank, I saw some little eyes peeking out at me from within the floating plants.

I can't even begin to tell how excited I am, this is my first drop experience ever! However I made the foolish move of putting gravel and clear glass rocks into the spawn tank BEFORE the spawn... so trying to fish out the fry was a nightmare. 

I literally spent an hour gently removing larger rocks, wiggling the small gravel and taking out the plants while I searched for fry. Then out came the air pump/filter, which is of course attached to the bottom of the tank by a small platform that you're supposed to cover with substrate. Out flew maybe ten fry that were hiding under there. 

My 3" net did a pretty good job of catching the little buggers. I put them all into a small plastic container filled with their tank water while I cleaned the tank, removed the remaining gravel and rocks, and re-filled it. Added some Declor-Ease and salt, and in total I've about 15-16 small fry, happily munching on Hikari: First Bites. 

Right now there's not much in the tank. Just two soft plastic plants, two live plants (all floating, though the live ones should be planted in gravel) and a small heater. No filter, no air pump, nothing on the bottom. I'm going to get them more live plants to hide in both at the top and bottom of the tank, this weekend... if they survive that long. I hope they do. About 2/3's are hanging out near the bottom, and the rest are floating around up top in the plants. When I tap the glass to make sure they're alive, they all scatter.

Does anyone have any suggestions of what I should do now? The mother is back into the 20gal community tank. 

I'll take a picture once my camera batteries recharge.

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