Freshwater fry born! wait….nevermind

About last week or so Tami and I discover that our pregnant mollies had given birth to a fry(the only one we saw atleast).  We were really excited and watched it for a few minutes swimming in and out of the big swiss cheese like rock that decorated our tank thinking that we should probably try to net it out but also realized that we have no place for it, so for now, it stays in the tank.  Later on that night we spot the little guy again and begin to discuss how many there should be when all of the sudden this litting thing takes off and tries to swim over to another rock through basically what would be an under water open field.

Needless to say, the fry was spotted by the largest of the Bloodfin tetras and VERY quickly consumed him right in front of us.  This shocked us quite a bit not thinking that the tetras were cannibalistic and brought us to head to the local fish store in search of a breeding box with a V-insert that you attach on the side of the tank, which brings us to part two of this story.

I noticed about 2 days ago that one of our female guppies was looking rather large and round so I figured she must be pregnant and decided to place her and a small male in the breeding tank that was now setup.

Skip yesterday since nothing interesting happened.

Today though, Tami was looking at the guppies in the breeding box and thought that the female had made a duke because the male was just going crazy after her poop.  Upon closer inspection I noticed a itty bitty tiny little fry.  I thought "wow" and stared at it for the next few minutes.  I hadnt read that they give birth to about 25 to 50 fry.  Oh man, looks like all but 2 had gotten eaten, bummer.  Now to take the male out and leave the female just incase she pops out more.  Well, we leave and get some food and do some errands, when we get back, both fry are gone.  Two things could have happened:

a) The female guppy ate them.

b) The angelfish in the tank suked them through the slots on the bottom of the breeder box.

Either way it sucks.  I have since thrown some aquatic plant soil in the base of the breeder box to cover up the slots a bit but still allow water to cycle in.  I also realize now that once the female pops and looks back to her normal size I should just go ahead and throw her back in the tank since I have read that they become cannibalistic in small spaces.  Anyway, we hope to have more fry soon as we have other females that look quite large now.  We can only hope to keep some alive or we might have to setup a 10 gallon tank for breeding purposes.