Shelby

My fry are about 3/8 inch long. How old would these be? Just found them yesterday. I have the ones I could catch in breeder net. Is the breeder net better than the main tank still some hiding in the main tank didn't want to kill them trying to save them. What is the size of newly hatched fry?

I also had some things "swimming" that were too small to identify. I captured one of things for closer examination but could Identify looked like "black spot" Any clue to what it may have been?

Tom

Congrats. The ones that are about 3/8" are a few months old(based on my experience). What other fish do you have? What size of a tank? Depending on what other fish you have, they could stay in the main tank. From experience, the net raises the nitrates and nitrites of the tank. The ones that look like black spots, are most likely new fry.
Tom

Shelby

oops!! They all went to the garden Threw the babies out with the bath water. I have a 28 gal with 5 serape tetra's and 3 platy's (5 little one's in breeder net) couple more running loose. How would a net raise levels in the tank? I can understand how would inside the net but these guy's are little. I might release them They lasted this long on there own. I guess I wasn't ready for babies.

Tom

With serpaes, I wouldn't trust them. Their poo would get stuck in the bottom of the net and just sit there and not decompose. For them being little, that's what I thought until I got at least +90 fry. If you want to release them, it's up to you.
Tom

COBettaCouple

Our little Daisy surprised us with her first batch of fry a month 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 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. We also planted a bunch of fake plants real close together in a calm area of the tank for them to hide in. For the filter, we cut the netting off of a fish net & wrapped it around the intake with a sterilized rubber band.

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 for them when batch #3 comes along around the 29th of this month.

This seems to be a working setup for us and I guess it depends on how much you want to spend and how many fry you'd like to raise. You'd probably want a 5.5 or 10-gal for the platys and maybe a 2.5 for the fry since your platy may be near the end of her batches if you have some a few months old.. Do you know which platy is the mother & does she currently have any little black spots in her stomach? She could be done if her stomach is clear of little eyes for a few weeks - I think since they drop fry every few weeks or so once they start dropping them (we're still new to fish and platy pregnancy so you'd want to confirm with an expert how to be sure whether your platy is done).

Stradius011

I'm confused....so are your babies in the garden or in the net?

Tom

That's like me. After my tank cycled (about 3-4 weeks), I had 4 black calico platys. They are so beautiful.
Tom

COBettaCouple

You've got black calico platys? WOW.. Very cool, i'd love to see pics of those beauties.. we'd love to have some of those, but none at our LFS and not sure if we're ready to try mail order yet being pretty new to the fish world. We have the gold twinbar, a sunset mickey mouse and 2 blue mickey mouse platies now, but someday i'd love to have a big tank with 3 or 4 of all my favorite types. Next to Bettas, they are my favorite kind of fish.

Tom

They blend in with the background and are just plain hard to get on film anyways. I got them from breeding a male red platy and a female red wag tail platy. I had bought a female B.calico but it died not to long ago. I sold 2 of them and have 2 left. One is a male and 1 is a female. I'm trying to breed them to see if they will give birth to more B.C.s and then sell them since I have only seen one and she died in my tank. And if you lived close to me, I would sell them to you for only about $1-2CDN(pretty cheap money wise here).
Tom

COBettaCouple

Yea.. too bad we're this far apart or I'd be wanting to do that. Sounds like a nice job of breeding 2 beautiful platy types.

Tom

I still haven't bred them yet if that is what you mean. I just traded my columbian shark today so I might be starting to see some more babys soon.
Tom

COBettaCouple

Just meant if you did breed them, we wish we were close enough to buy some from you.