Has anyone ever experienced anything like this before? I had 3 blue paradise fish in my tank and a pair of dalmation mollies. The paradise fish were beginning to breed and shortly after I noticed a few fry at the top of my tank. I assumed they were paradise babies since we had seen them doing their mating dance. A couple of days later when I went to feed the fish, 2 of the 3 paradise fish and both mollies were nowhere to be found. The remaining paradise fish had somehow managed to break open the fry box and only 1 fry remained. The fry never strayed from the p.fish and sometimes would hide in its mouth. As time went on we were very suprised to see that it was actually a baby mollie. Not dalmation but completely black. It has been nearly 4 years now and the two of them are completely in love and never apart. We have moved a couple of times and when scooping the fish into transport containers I must catch both of them at the same time or the "adoptive mother" becomes very agressive and attacks the net and lunges at me through the glass. The mollie is stunted in size and just never grew very much. It swims under the belly of its mom all day and rubs all over her and nibbles along her belly constantly.. actually he looks like he is trying to nurse from her. It is very bizzarre. He will reach around and curl himself under her belly and "tickle" her with his fins. He also seems to be trying to encourage her to swim with him as she is the laziest fish I have ever seen. Has anyone ever heard or seen anything even remotely like this before? I worry that she might not live much longer and am afraid that "little black b*****d"(so he is called) will die of a broken fish heart when she does.

I have never heard a story like that. Paradise fish will normally eat mollies so maybe that baby was just lucky, too big, or maybe the paradise fish was too full after eating all the others. It sounds like the molly thinks the paradise fish is its mate/friend more than parent as neither mollies nor paradise fish possess much parental care.

Did the missing adult paradise fish and mollies show up? Were they just hiding?

Thanks for sharing.

I altered the one word that you used because some people may have found it offensive.

the four missing fish were never seen again. I thought that she might have ate them but I have a hard time believing that one tiny paradise fish(the remaining one was the smallest of the three) could consume four fish that were bigger than she was in such a short period of time. We searched the tank and surrounding area incase they jumped out somehow but never seen a trace of any of them. She would have had to eat them very fast as we were watching them constantly because we were trying to save what fry we could. I guess we will never really know! thanks for the reply

I really doubt she ate them. Even if they died fast, she couldn't eat that much dead fish that fast. They may have jumped and then bounced around and ended up who knows where. Or maybe the aliens got them.

Aliens cool! Have you played insaniquarium online (look in google). Feed fish! Fight Aliens!

I love that game! I haven't played it recently.

I'm not so sure about the lack of parental care. I'm in a semi state of shock and disbelief right now. My paradise fish I had set aside for the pet shop spawned, the tank isn't a big one and the father couldn't defend his nest from the other 20 paradise in there. Before I had a chance to catch the others my daughter stole the eggs and gave them to my male in the breeding tank. They thought dinner was being served up(that time of day) and before the female (Tiger) had a chance to munch caviar the male was in there defending the eggs like mad. He built them a nice nest in his favorite spot, relocated them and they hatched today. He neither cares where the eggs came from or that they hatched in less than 24 hours. He isn't eating them but tending to the like the super dad he is. The female has only now come around to the idea of those eggs now that they hatched. I'm seriously thinking about spawning my bettas and seeing if he will adopt those eggs as well but it would take a few weeks after hatching to see if any survive. When I thin the young out of the tank he becomes highly aggressive and attacks both the net and his mate before trying to gather his young of all size and age up. I know these new fry are the adopted ones since his last spawn 'left' the nest the day before yesterday and they don't spawn that fast.

Next time I'll document it on video as well as the 'betta trials'. It's one of those seeing is believing kinda things!

Each fish is different. My male didn't defend his young well. You have a really protective male paradise fish. It's kind of like that with chickens. Many hens won't sit on even their own eggs while others will brood most anything round.