Male mollies - interesting behavior

[CACAdmin]

As you know I have 2 male mollies who jostle for position of alpha male in my 70g (the Velifera always the winner...lol). Tonight I was sitting watching TV and heard all this splashing in the tank and saw a behavior I have never seen in any of my fish. I look over to see the my Green Sailfin Lyretail with dorsal fin raised in full display at one end of the tank and the Velifera swimming around the tank near the surface (dorsal not raised) using his tail to repeatedly slap the surface of the water. This looked like it took quite an effort (nose down to get the tailfin slapping at the surface). At first I was concerned there might be something wrong with him but apparently not... it was all for show & to communicate something to the other male (presumably his displeasure with the lyre asserting his presence).

Having never seen mollies in the wild, it made me wonder if this is just another normal behavior one might see in the wild.

[GaryofMontreal]

I wish I'd had more time to watch big sailfin mollies in the wild, but in my short experience, I was impressed by their sense of distance. They were always in groups, and all the showy males were about the same distance from each other - farther apart than a large tank. They displayed, and females and juveniles sailed through these territories, but I never saw a big male cross the lines. I was hoping a fish would come through to make everyone scatter so I could see the re-sorting, but I wasn't there long enough. Sometimes I could see a dozen males of what I guess were P. orri, but all had the same general invisible territories. Maybe what you saw was behavior towards a male who just didn't get it and swim away like he should, given that he was in the invisible space. Of course, the glass wall limits that :smile: