Mollies

Mollies, the scientific name of the genus Poecilia, belongs to the Poeciliidae family. This name refers to several closely related species and many breeding forms that differ in color, body pattern and fin shape.

In the home aquariums of Europeans, it appeared at the end of the 19th century, and already in the 1920s new hybrid forms were bred. On the territory of the countries of the former USSR, the first batches of these fish were delivered from the GDR in 1956.

Despite all the diversity, in aquariums, as a rule, there are only three species: Molly sphenops, Molliesia velifera and Molliesia latipina. All the rest are bred artificially and do not occur in nature. So, as a result of hybridization, new breeds were obtained on the basis of these species. The most famous are “Lyrokhvost” and “Balloon”, and in the course of further selection, fish appeared that inherited the characteristics of both breeds.

Differences between breed and color variation

There is often a misapplication of these definitions. Under the “breed” understand inherited morphological changes in the structure of the fins and body, the very tails-lyres and rounded bodies of “cylinders”. A color variation is a coloration that can be very diverse and is not always inherited, and is sometimes lost or changed as a result of crossing with other color forms.

Thus, Mollies Lyra is a breed that can have a wide variety of colors, and Black Mollies is a color variation of a breed or a specific species, for example, Molly Sphenops.

Popular types and breeds of Mollies

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