Aggressive Female Balloon Molly

[159NKR]

So I recently posted this: https://www.tropicalfishforums.co.uk/index.php/topic,231034.0.html

But now I have a new Molly problem. We have a male and a female...Initially we noticed that the male was following the female around quite a lot but that mostly calmed down after a few days.

Now we have the opposite... The male has completely gone into hiding, mostly behind the filter, and when he does come out the female immediately chases after him, much more aggressivly than he ever did to her. I can't see any injuries so I don't think she's actually nipping him, but this is clearly the reason why he's spending all his time there. She occasionally goes for our Platys too but not with anything like the same aggression.

After much reading online I'm now discovering that one cause of this may be that she's pregnant... I'm a bit pissed off that the guy in the shop didn't mention that this would be a possibility. I had no idea that Balloon Mollies were Live Bearers... I like to think I'd done a good amount of research before entering into fish keeping so I feel like a bit of an idiot. I will admit that we kind of got carried away when buying them as we thought they were cute, but I would have expected that when I asked the guy about any potential issues with them he would have raised this as a possibility. We're not equipped to be dealing with fish babies at this point and to be completely honest breeding is a huge step away from why we ever wanted fish in the first place.

I am at a bit of a loss over what to do... Even if pregnancy is not the reason for our hiding male then it is a possiblity (certainty) in the future. Having looked at our Platy pair I'm pretty sure we've got a male and female there too so presumably it's also likely to happen with them...?

So I guess I have two questions:

1) What could be the cause of our male hiding all the time?
2) Should we be panicking about having two pairs of fish that could produce untold numbers of offspring we don't want?

If anyone can tell with any certainty if we have a pregnancy, I've attached a pic of our troublesome girl.

[TropicalFishForums]

[plankton]

You need more than one female per male. If she is big, and therefore the alpha she won't take any hassle from any male once she's pregnant. She looks like she is as well.
You need at least two females per male with most livebearers.

[159NKR]

You need more than one female per male. If she is big, and therefore the alpha she won't take any hassle from any male once she's pregnant. She looks like she is as well.
You need at least two females per male with most livebearers.

So... another thing the guy in the shop failed to tell us... Won't be going back there in a hurry.

Given that I'm already on the limit stock-wise I'm reluctant to add any more fish, especially if I might need to do the same with the Platys. Do you think the best course of action would be to remove them from the tank and either see if I can find a new home for them or see if the shop will take them back? Or persevere and see if things improve...? I don't like seeing our male all sad and lonely hiding in the corner!!

Would there be any benefit in taking her out for a bit and then reintroducing her? I've got a 12L tank I could put her in for a while??

[plankton]

That doesn't often work with livebearers, although it's quite common to try with cichlids.
I'd move the mollies on to a tank with lots of mollies.