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Our platy tank has 2 blue mickey mouse (Ariel & Minnie), a sunset fire mickey mouse (Belle) and a pregnant gold twinbar (Daisy) who's given us 26 fry that we've found so far:
LOL.. they are stomachs with fins, but we love the little girls.. they're funny.. anytime ANYONE goes near the tank, they swarm to them.. not exactly picky in who they get food from.
Lovely fish, have you had Platys long? I just got my first the other day, and was told by the LFS that they were Sunset Fire, but they look different than yours. Mine have black fins and tails and snout, their bodies are orange around the edges with yellow main color, and black speckles! Any idea? I would post a picture, but don't have a camera.
I agree the blue mikey mouse are very cool.
Lovely fish, have you had Platys long? I just got my first the other day, and was told by the LFS that they were Sunset Fire, but they look different than yours. Mine have black fins and tails and snout, their bodies are orange around the edges with yellow main color, and black speckles! Any idea? I would post a picture, but don't have a camera.
I agree the blue mikey mouse are very cool.
Fish in the Frozen North. 8)
Thanks. We got the Platys in early January to be tankmates to our 1st betta, Super Mario. He got along with them, but we decided to put him in his own tank because he'd be happier. We didn't know Daisy was pregnant until one morning when i saw something swim against the current & that LED to an interesting morning trying to save the remaining fry and find a place for them. They're great fish - next to Bettas, my favorite fish.. they're little characters and will gladly suck up to anyone who they think might feed them. Daisy's due for her 3rd batch of babies this week.. hopefully tom. or we'll be gone on a trip before she's done with this batch.
How many do you have? All male, all female or mixed? Because of the black tail fin, it sounds like you have a wag and an variety that i've not run across before. Sounds like a pretty variety too.. probably cross-bred from other varieties, sounds like a Gold Twinbar might be in the mix. There are a HUGE number of Platy types out there as they mate without ANY encouragement at all, in fact it's hard to stop them.
Great lookin' fish...Great pictures...What is the secret to the clear pictures??
Our old Olympus C-4000 Zoom (4.0 megapixels). It still does the job well & always has been a solid camera. I tend to shoot from a slight angle to avoid the flash flare and color correct in photoshop. And the tank stays pretty clean, especially after adding the cory cats.
Lovely fish, have you had Platys long? I just got my first the other day, and was told by the LFS that they were Sunset Fire, but they look different than yours. Mine have black fins and tails and snout, their bodies are orange around the edges with yellow main color, and black speckles! Any idea? I would post a picture, but don't have a camera.
I agree the blue mikey mouse are very cool.
Fish in the Frozen North. 8)
After more research, I think that I stand corrected.. I believe you do indeed have a Sunset Fire Wagtail Platy.. the Sunset Fire can have a range of red/orange/yellow.
Thanks, and the female is getting fatter! I want to get them transferred to my 10 gal., to have a successful birth. I've had fish now for several years, but this is the first time for a livebearer in the tank. I know, that is what lots of folks start with, I'm backward about most things! But it is still exciting.
After more research, I think that I stand corrected.. I believe you do indeed have a Sunset Fire Wagtail Platy.. the Sunset Fire can have a range of red/orange/yellow. I found a picture! It isn't named, but I think you are right. It fits the Red Wagtail, except it has the yellow like one in the picture by aqualand pets plus, several frames down from top, on this link. http://tropicalfishgallery.com/speci...maculatus.html Thanks for your help.
Thanks, and the female is getting fatter! I want to get them transferred to my 10 gal., to have a successful birth. I've had fish now for several years, but this is the first time for a livebearer in the tank. I know, that is what lots of folks start with, I'm backward about most things! But it is still exciting.
Fish in the Frozen North 8)
Our little Daisy surprised us with her first batch of fry 34 days after we got her and we found a total of 8 fry.. the rest probably got eaten by the filter & other platy since we weren't expecting them. For her 2nd batch, what we did was convert the 10g platy tank from gravel to those flat marbles you find in the craft dept.. you have to keep up on cleaning it, since food & poo slide down to the tank bottom but it gives the fry a lot of ability to hide from the adults until we find them. If you want to avoid the extra tank cleaning work, stick with gravel though. The upside to the flat marbles is no gravel dust to worry about.
We also planted a whole bunch of fake plants real close together in a calm area (the side away from the filter) of the tank for the fry to hide in. For the filter, we cut the netting off of a fish net & wrapped it tight around the intake with a sterilized (or at least cleaned) rubber band. Make sure the netting doesn't have any gaps/bunches the tiny fry could swim into & get sucked into the filter. The best way to do it, is to turn the filter off and take the intake tube off & out of the tank. That makes it easier to put the netting on right.
You'll know your platy is getting closer when you can see the little black dots in her stomach. She'll square off back around her anal fin when it's getting to be near time.
We had a little 1.5 gal portable tank with a submersible heater, air stone and a sponge filter for the fry but they've become numerous enough for us to get a 10-gal tank ready just for them when batch #3 comes along around the 29th of this month. We did the same thing with the netting & the filter in the baby tank that we did in the adult tank. We left the bottom of the fry tank bare and just have a couple little grass like plants & a little cave in their tank.
For the fry, you'll need fry food if you can get it at the store. If not, what we do is put flakes in a sandwich bag and using a rolling pin to crush them into powder. Then we feed them a pinch in the morning & evening.
She'll drop fry every few weeks or so (25 days is avg) after the 1st batch.
Oh, forgot to mention that she'll probably have them at night - at least Daisy likes to, so each morning we do a baby check to see if we see any fry anywhere in the tank. If we find some, then we take out all the decoration and put the other fish in a big bowl while we search for fry. When we had gravel, we just would carefully go through the gravel from one side to the other a few times, moving it around to see if any fry would dart out. Now that we have marbles, we take the marbles out a handful at a time into a bucket making sure we haven't grabbed any by accident - they're so fast we've not accidentally grabbed any. We actually take out all the marbles and then we'll still find fry hiding in the debris on the bottom.. They are SO good at hiding. As long as we've got everything out, we'll clean up any debris (like old food or poop) after being sure no fry are still in the tank, then we put everything back in the opposite order we took everything out.
The fun part is that after the day we first find fry, we just automatically do that for the next 3-4 days as Platy can drop fry over a period like that.
I know I typed a lot & it seems like a ton of work.. but i wanted to cover all the details we've learned thru trial & error I could so you'll get all the fry saved that you can.. and it is a bit of work, but they're super adorable swimming around & doing platy stuff. Sadly, they don't all make it.. we've lost 7 of 26 found platys to sicknesses and 6 to me doing stupid mistakes. as far as disease goes. mostly swim bladder problems gets them so every so often i'll take a half of a cooked pea and try to crush it in the water so that it gets all powdery (try it in a bowl of water & you'll see what i mean) to help them out. As they get older, they'll like to nibble on the larger pieces that fall. Just clean up the peas & food at the bottom as often as you can, especially the pea.
You'll love watching them and should end up with a bunch of platy to find homes for.
What type of airstoe are you using. Because in the picture it looks like you airstone is in some kid of shap because the stream of bubbles are very wide.
What type of airstoe are you using. Because in the picture it looks like you airstone is in some kid of shap because the stream of bubbles are very wide.
Yazan,
Wow! Your platy's are so beautiful! I have a soft spot for them myself. Lots of personality tucked into a hardy yet bottomless pit. Very colorful too. I have never seen blue ones be so pretty. Here in MN all I have seen are ones that are blueish but kind of drab. Almost a grey color. If I see any like yours I will buy them right away!
Wow! Your platy's are so beautiful! I have a soft spot for them myself. Lots of personality tucked into a hardy yet bottomless pit. Very colorful too. I have never seen blue ones be so pretty. Here in MN all I have seen are ones that are blueish but kind of drab. Almost a grey color. If I see any like yours I will buy them right away!
Thanks, we love the little girls. Our blues were more grey-ish when we first got them, but we feed them color pellets for their evening meal each day and it's helped bring out their color. You're right about the bottomless pit.. we call them our "stomachs with fins" - they have NEVER seen food they won't eat - except for minced carrot.. lol.. go figure that one.
HI ARE YOUR PLANTS REAL OR PLASTIC. IF YOU DO WANT TO LIST HOW YOU SET UP YOUR TANK I WILL BE PLEASED TO KNOW.
YAZAN,
They're plastic plants.. I had a dozen of them packed in that area so it was a good hiding place for the fry. We set up 2 10g tanks for having fry - in this thread (Reply #13 & Reply #15 pretty much tell how we set them up.) If you have any other questions about our platy tanks, please let us know. Are you wanting to have platy fry?
HI ARE YOUR PLANTS REAL OR PLASTIC. IF YOU DO WANT TO LIST HOW YOU SET UP YOUR TANK I WILL BE PLEASED TO KNOW.
YAZAN,
They're plastic plants.. I had a dozen of them packed in that area so it was a good hiding place for the fry. We set up 2 10g tanks for having fry - in this thread (Reply #13 & Reply #15 pretty much tell how we set them up.) If you have any other questions about our platy tanks, please let us know. Are you wanting to have platy fry?
Nice platies! I'm planning to get blue mickey mouse platies too.
They're one of my favorite platy types.. a little more timid than some types but a lot of fun and beautiful to watch.. and you can tell who's who by the mickey mouse pattern since they have such variety in the black spots. We feed ours color pellets to help bring out their color.
Afternoon FLBettaCouple I had to go to two LFS yesterday in search of a birthing box to put the platy female as she gets close. I found one that looks like it might help. It has air tube going in, a slot in the bottom for fry to escape, and a fair sized area for the female to remain. Hopefully will catch her in time. That is really the only question I have in what to do. You can see her tummy getting darker, but she isn't really fat yet, and you cannot see individual 'spots' that are darker, just an all over darker, fatter belly.
One good thing the lady at the LFS said she would gladly take back the Chinease Algae Eater. I told it was that or the BIG 'E', as I just can't abide a fish that is mean in the community tank. It has been taking up my 10 gal, and that one will be great for the platy fry to grow out. This was at the store I love to go to. They however are always really low on supplies, so I went another 50 miles into Anchorage, to a Petco, where their fish department is SO sad. ALL the tanks had ICH!
They did however have that breeding tank, so it was worth the drive. They also had a tank of mixed platys that were
labled, and several like mine that they called, Sunset Fire Wagtail Platys.
Fish in the not so frozen north! +45 F today & SUN 8)
Cool! I love Mickey Mouse platies because they're cute, colorful, and remind me of Disney World! Disney World was a frequent family vacation spot when I was younger, so in a weird way my Mickey Mouse platy makes me a little sentimental...
Afternoon FLBettaCouple I had to go to two LFS yesterday in search of a birthing box to put the platy female as she gets close. I found one that looks like it might help. It has air tube going in, a slot in the bottom for fry to escape, and a fair sized area for the female to remain. Hopefully will catch her in time. That is really the only question I have in what to do. You can see her tummy getting darker, but she isn't really fat yet, and you cannot see individual 'spots' that are darker, just an all over darker, fatter belly.
Oh.. I've seen that box at Petco. I know a lot of people use them, but honestly, I'd not recommend using it although it is the nicest one i saw there. When we tried to put Daisy in a 1/2g rubbermaid container setup like a little tank, even that stressed her out so much that she wouldn't drop her fry and after a few days we put her back in the tank where she had them that night. That's why we setup the 'forest' & covered the intake with netting & all. Sometimes, dropping the fry can kill the Platy or cause her to abort her fry so we go with the least stress possible. Also, I've read on here of unhappy platy owners who used a breeder box & still had the fry get eaten.
But Platys do have different temperments and Daisy just happens to be one that gets real upset at being confined.. your Platy may be different in temperment so you have to make the best call for your girl there.
Thanks for the heads up. I will watch her closely, and if she seems stressed at all, will just let her out in the 10 gal. I do have a sponge over the intake for the filter, so from that standpoint, the fry should be safe, I just worry about MOM eating them.
Thanks for the heads up. I will watch her closely, and if she seems stressed at all, will just let her out in the 10 gal. I do have a sponge over the intake for the filter, so from that standpoint, the fry should be safe, I just worry about MOM eating them.
Fish in the Frozen North. 8)
The Platy momma is supposed to have a hormone release that makes her not hungry after dropping fry.. she's also supposed to need to rest for up to a day or 2 afterwards. Daisy didn't read that and pretty much just went on with her daily routine of swimming around looking for food after dropping her fry. LOL
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