newby sam

I have 1 female and 2 male red wag platies for about 4 weeks now. I just added two hi-fin female platies yesterday. This is in a 10 gallon tank. I was wondering when, if at all, my settled in platties would be having little platies. How long until I see one? Can you tell if you are about to have a new member?

COBettaCouple

You can expect to have platy fry and plenty of them.. 100s most likely. Here's some info we sent another member who had 1 pregnant platy:

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 termporarily 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 did the same thing in a 10g tank 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.

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 thawed frozen 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.

Neville

hi sam, welcome to fishlore!!! this is neville.

Actually u have to keep 2 females for 1 male platy, this way the male will not be able to harass a single female, u have 2 males and 3 females now, i think u should add another female. yes, platies will have lots of fries soon, they r livebearers; they r very easy to breed. when a platy gets pregnant its belly will grow big and a black spot on her belly will grow bigger, then u have to move it to a breeder tank, or else parents will eat their fries!!! but if u keep lots of plants some fries will survive naturally.

good luck!!!!

newby sam

Is there any way for the fish not to breed? I cant afford another tank for little fry.

COBettaCouple

The only sure way to not get fry is to get all males - maybe you could exchange the females for males at your LFS. Even if you get all females like we did, they could end up being pregnant from their time at the store. That's how we got surprised.

Most, if not all, of the fry would not make it from one thing or another if you let them fend for themselves and a number of platy owners do just let nature take it's course with the fry so it's an option.

kalika

I have platy fry now that I am thrilled about but I have had endless amounts of Zebra Danio fry since January. Between the 5 of them, they are scattering eggs every few days. I finally quit trying to save them because they would live for a week and then just die off. I started to figure that if they can hide out and survive long enough in the big tank, then they truly deserve to live and would be text book example of survival of the fittest. If you leave them be, they just become little treats for the bigger fish. Free food if you will. I know it sounds heartless but it took me 3 months to finally get there with it. My platys on the other hand being much hardier and easier to feed and larger, are much more easy to take care of. Less of them too.

vin

Just get a breed-n-show tank...They cost about $5 and hang right inside your main tank No special equipment needed....Let the fry raise in the tank and then take them to the LFS to donate for adoption....I do this with my swordtails...If you don't want too breed you'll have to choose which sex you want to keep...However, keep in mind that if they've already mated that the females can store fry for up to and sometimes over a year......

newby sam

Thank you all for your advise! No fry yet...I think I am going to wait for some little ones and then let nature do its thing. If I'm not satisfied with that, then I will try and get a little show tank. Thanks again!

newby sam

Good News! One of my platys is pregnant! I noticed about 5 days ago. Her belly is noticably bigger, but I figured she wasnt sick since she is swimming normally. I was wondering when I might actually see fry. I bought a little breeding net with some fake plants to put in it. I guess I am wondering what my next step is. Help anyone!

COBettaCouple

Is there any black in her belly yet? If you're able to post pics of her belly, we could give you an idea of how long she's got until dropping fry. If you see distinct black dots, then the fry are looking at you and you're a week or so away. What type of platy is pregnant?

newby sam

It is a red wag platy. And no obvious black in her belly at all. I will try to post pictures later today.

COBettaCouple

sounds good. she hasn't gotten testy with any of the other fish has she?

newby sam

She hasn't. But I have 2 other males (i know, wrong ratio) and the bigger one follows her around and when the other male comes around, he chases him off. But the thing is, my tank is only 10g and there isnt that much chasing room.

COBettaCouple

you'll want to watch him, he may start bullying her to try to get her to abort the fry and drop tasty treats for them.