Platy fry

lilras

60gal with Red Wag Platy. I have two adult female with their fry. I had many eggs, but some survived. (This happened in my 10g. Moved them to this tank).

So now I have about 10+ babies that grew to a decent size and are doing amazing! Some are bigger than others.

I have a question though- I've noticed that lately some of them are going to the surface. They would be at the middle/bottom at times, then up to the surface again, and hang around the floating plants. Should I be concerned?
What would be the best thing to feed the fry to help its growth?

Water parameters all are normal. I do water changes often.
I'm still learning this whole fish keeping thing. I'm enjoying it very much so far... So any help I can get wtih this, I'd greatly appreciate!

leeteekyung

hi, same with me, my platies also gave birth and now there is a couple of their 1cm fries in my tank. i just feed them crushed pellet or dried worm, i heard that live foods are good for boost their growth such as brine shrimp, or infusoria. provide them lots of hidding place since platy easily give birth, the female can hold male's sperm for 6-9 months in their body and whenever they feel comfortable they will spawn more fries. for newly born fries just leave them alone for 2 days, they have yolk as food from their mom, after then i just feed them with crushed pellet.

rhessling

i feed them baby brine srimp and also just good tropical fish flakes finely ground between your fingers i think the behavior you seeing in your fry is hideing that is norma if you want to speed up there growth make sure you water temp is up like 76-78 or so
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lilras

Yeah, one of my females are ready to spawn anytime soon. I bought some brine shrimp today, so I will start feeding the fish some brine shrimp and see how they like it.

Hopefully I will have more fry that survive. The females seem to be good with the eggs once spawned.

leeteekyung

i added 1 dwarf gourami to control their population, he will hunt the fries as his snack. this may sounds cruel, but just imagine this, 1 platy could hatches 50 fries, i got 4 so there will be about 200fries in my tank, where on earth i could keep them all LOL, even the pet shop dont stock that much. with 1 dwarf gourami, now there is just 3 grown up platy fries.

lilras

Yeah its tough, hopefully soon someone will scoop up some of my platy fry so I could add more fish to my 60g. Tomorrow I will be redoing the landscape of my 60g, replacing the substrate with black substrate (it's red/white right now). Then, I will purchase more plants (and put them in the substrate instead of floating) and put in some driftwood. It will look more like a "home" for the fish . Excited to see how it turns out.

leeteekyung

did u place them in a breeding tank? just let the platy born their fry in your main tank, other fish will also eat the fry. i think u can also release the fries into the wild such a pond or river hehe.. if u feel responsible for the fries, next time just buy male one, i guaranted he wont get pregant :))

lilras

Females spawned in the 10g. Then when the fry got a little bigger, I moved them all to the 60 g using the same tank water and filter into the bigger filler.
And yeah, when I first bought the fish, i got a male that came with three females. Unfortunately the male and one female died shortly after I got them :(. So there's only two adult female plus all their babies.
So what I'm thinking of doing is use my 10 gal for the fry while I set up the 60g with the new substrate. Let the fry grow in the 10g and whatever I will do with the babies, I'm not sure yet.

I'll put up a picture of my pregnant female and the babies tomorrow.
Posted via Mobile Device

lilras

This is my pregnant female and in the 2nd pic, some of the babies. Best pic I could take.
You may notice some are bigger than others.

rhessling

Do not relese you fish in to wild water ways this is how we get invasive species have some respect for mother earth