Tracy10

hi,
Can i have just male platies or will they fight ...i only have a 2ft tank & dont want to end up with lots babies. sorry if daft question but this is my first tank.

Tracy

Tom

You can go with just males. I don't think they would fight. I know I have 1-2 males of my own and they are just fine.
Tom

COBettaCouple

Tom's right. Platys are pretty good natured, having males & females together brings out their worst behavior. Good idea to get all males, we got all females and are waiting for the 3rd batch of fry to be born right now. How many gallons is your tank? I believe Platys will show more schooling behavior if you have 3 or more of the same type.. and Cory Cats are great if you have the room as they help clean up all the platy poop.

LetDiceFly

It is best if you get males that are the same size. They will fight at first to develop a pecking order but that should go away rather quickly. If they are about the same size that will prevent one from being picked on.

COBettaCouple

Good point. Thanks, I'd forgotten that very good point.

Tracy10

Thank you everyone,for your advice


Tracy

Tracy10

hi,
just abit puzzled...so do cory cats eat the platy poop ? ewwww ! .

Do i need to have bottom fish then,as dont they just make more poop themselves,which is defeating the object?

I do love catfish but tank only 18 gallon (uk) and i like guppies,tetras,platies & i know i am limited.

Tracy

COBettaCouple

Yea, they eat poop, uneaten food, whatever they can find.. They do make poop themselves, but since we got them, the platy tank has been a lot cleaner and had much better water chemistry. You can find a number of cory cats that don't get very big so they don't take up a lot of the bioload if you have 2 or 3.

manda

no, they do not eat poop. there are very very few fish that eat other fish waste. the ones you will find are not even kept as pets. its a common misconception.

Neville

sorry manda!! i think they do eat poops!!! cories look for scraps on the bottom of the tank, now what kind of scraps would they find on the bottom of the tank other than fish poops !!!!

kalika

Cories do not eat poo. They find algae and scraps of food the other fish don't get to before it sinks to the bottom. They are particularly good at digging into the gravel to get it. This is also why it is important to supplement their diet with sinking wafers and stuff since some fish aren't piggy enough to leave much for the cories to find. No matter what, you can't get cories and think you can slack on the partial water changes since truly you are adding more fish and increasing the bioload. Even thought they eat left over food, there is still lots of fishy poo in the water. I have a couple of cories in a tank with a couple of male guppies and they are definitely not eating the guppy poo.

COBettaCouple

After researching & researching the issue of poop-eating since my earlier post, I found that all information tells me that the Petco 'fish expert' lied (not for the 1st time) about our Corys eating the poop - it's one of many reasons we're done giving them our business.

The platy tank seemed to be cleaned of poop after adding the corys so it seemed like they were eating it, but i wonder if they don't just sort of push it down into the gravel as they shuffle the gravel about searching for food because I can't find any information to indicate that they will - only information that they don't.

So - to get back to tracy10's original question - You could have a tank with platys, corys & otos if you want to keep things cleaner - the corys WILL eat the leftover food and wafers, the otos go after algae and will eat wafers as well. Although you could just have a tank of around 9-10 total platies and/or guppies (all males) and keep things clean with maintenance of your own.

kalika

I can state for sure that with 2 cories and 2 guppies, I have plenty of poo to vacuum up at my weekly partial water change.