skinny?

I've read that platies are meant to be skinny after giving birth and that's how you tell which one just had the babies. But how skinny are they meant to be?

One of my platies gave birth almost 2 weeks ago and she's still really skinny. She is eating and swimming around normally but she's so thin. It's scaring me because I keep reading things about fish TB and I don't want to have to put them all down and chuck my tank away

She has no sores or any external symptoms. I didn't have any idea she was pregnant so maybe she's just a small fish?

 

I have platies and just after droping fry the girls look slI'm (not skin and bone skinny) until the next batch of fry start making her look fat agian. Remember they drop fry about once every 28 days. how many females and males do you have. I have 2 males and 6 females. That way no one girl is harrased too much by the male(s). If I had a bigger tank I would love to get 6 more girls. but my tank will not support that many.

 

She's not bone skinny, but she's definitely thin. I have two female platies and a male (I thought I had 3 females but the male has grown recently and is definitely not female lol).

She is thinner than the male though, so that is why I was curious.

 

is she eating? does she look off? is her color good? is she hiding from the male? if you have the room you may want to get more females. do you have places for her to hide?
Just before the girls are ready to drop their fry they look like they will "burst"
What else do you have in your tank?
Susan

 

What are you feeding? How often? It could be that you could give more frozen brine shrimp, or bloodworm treats to help get her plumped up again. Producing fry will take a lot out of the females, if you feed a diet higher in protien, it helps them have larger healthier fry.

 

She's still eating, apart from her weight loss after the fry she looks fine. I've been keeping an eye on her colour and it's still good. She's a pink and white mickey mouse platy so a lot of her is white, however the red, pink and black parts are normal and her fins are normal, no sign of fin rot or anything like that.

There are places to hide in there, and so far the male doesn't chase the females at all. He only recently looked like he had a gondopodium so I think he's in late juvenilehood or very early adult, so he may start harrassing them soon.

She didn't look like she was going to burst at all, but it was definitely her that had the babies as she was the only female in the tank at the time (at the time of the birth I had one male platy and the rest were male guppies), so it was definitely her. The fry were quite small and there was only about 10-15 of them.

I haven't fed them any live foods or anything like that because I keep hearing they can get intestinal worms that way. I am going to get them some different food tomorrow, because I was thinking a better diet would help her.

So what foods should I get? I was going to get some livebearer flakes because I have all livebearers, tubifex worms and some algae wafers.

What would you guys recommend?

 

I do not use algae waffers, they just turn the water green. Just some good flake food, tubifex worms,maybe some pellets (I use minI pellets) and if you wanted you could even feed them live baby brine shrimp. I'm still trying to figure out how to hatch out only a hundred or two at a time.
Susan

 

FishGirl,

When you figure it out, could you post about it please?

 

bhcaaron, Yup

 

hatching bbs

it'll be hard to measure out that small of an amount at a time. how are you hatching them now? how much aquarium salt do you use in proportion to the amount of bbs eggs? do you use aeration?

I do not use algae waffers, they just turn the water green. Just some good flake food, tubifex worms,maybe some pellets (I use minI pellets) and if you wanted you could even feed them live baby brine shrimp. I'm still trying to figure out how to hatch out only a hundred or two at a time.
Susan

 

Ahh well, my platy didn't make it. She was really weak and I think just didn't recover from the birth of the babies.

To add insult to injury, my new high fin platy swam around the tank like a crazy thing, spinning all around as if she couldn't control herself and then dropped dead. *sigh*. Ammo & 'trite were all zero so I don't know what it was. I'd only had her for a week, so probably nothing that I had done.

I believe the deaths were totally unrelated, but it's still annoying.

 

the platys..

:'( we're sorry to hear you lost both of them.. that's a bad fish day for sure.

 

I an not growing BBS at this time.I'm still at the thinking stage with the BBS.
I was thinking for the water do up a gallon jug at a time. and put it in a small medicen bottle that has a plastic lid. Drill a hole in the lid and fit an air tube in the hole. take something to wrap around the neck of the bottle so the bottle can hang from the side of the tank so the bottle will be the same temp as the water in the tank. Now the HARD PART...how to mesaure out the BBS egg.
Susan

 

I'm Sorry about you loss.

 

bbs

we used one of those hatchery kits, the black box with the collection container that has the hole in the lid. (mainly because I don't do good at DIY stuff)

We just used a set of measuring spoons to measure the smallest amount of eggs (1/8 tsp) and dumped that into the box with 1 tbsp of aquarium salt. We added room temp treated water and put an airstone in it.

When we wanted to collect the shrimp, i'd fill the collection container with treated water, take the air stone out of the box and put the container into the hole on top of the box. (tapping it until no air pockets were in it) Then i'd turn a light plugged into the wall beside the box and let the bbs swim up into the container until I had as much as I wanted. Then i'd take the container away and put the air stone back in and feed our fish the collected bbs. I could feed our fry for about a week on that easily.

I an not growing BBS at this time.I'm still at the thinking stage with the BBS.
I was thinking for the water do up a gallon jug at a time. and put it in a small medicen bottle that has a plastic lid. Drill a hole in the lid and fit an air tube in the hole. take something to wrap around the neck of the bottle so the bottle can hang from the side of the tank so the bottle will be the same temp as the water in the tank. Now the HARD PART...how to mesaure out the BBS egg.
Susan

 

COBettaCouple. Have thought about one of the kits but has I only want to hatch less than 500 at a time I think one of the kits would have too much waste.
Susan

 

we just got the kit for the box, since I couldn't DIY anything. We were thinking about wasting the eggs too since we didn't need a lot (especially after we were reduced to a handful of fry). The key is to just put a small amount of eggs in the box and then just keep collecting them until they run out - which is usually a week or so. Some could also be frozen in ice cubes and later dropped in tanks with fish that would go after dead bbs.

 

Hey! Good idea about freezing them. I did not think of that.

 

np.. someone else on here gave me the idea a while back. they're also useful if something happens and you don't have any fresh bbs to feed the fish.