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Hi

my tank has not been well lately and so breeding has been out of the question.

the tank is 25G and has four female platies, 1 female guppy, 2 female mollies and one male platy.

I have had a couple of batches of fry pre illness out break, at the moment (amazingly) i think my fave(home grown!) molly is pregnant(her Boyfriend died a month ago)

i do not have much success with fry survival, and would like to know what to do to give them the best start in life, this molly is 1 and a half and i would really like to keep her off spring.


should i change the water more often? (currently 25% weekely?)

should i keep them in fry trap for how long?

my previous experience has been very slow growing fry with maybe only two of three survivors who take really long time to get fully grown.

also strangely the fish that grown the best live with the cichlids(orginally put in as food!)

so any advice?

thanks
GFG


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Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself.
Harvey S. Firestone

Well what I usually do is I take the pregnant female out and put her in a 5 gallon tank or even just a heated container. Then put lots of plants in there, along with a good amount of floating plants. Then when she releases all of the fry then take her out. Start feeding them daphina, bbs ( but their alomost big enough to take full grown in a week or so daphina is good ), also feed them some crushed up flake food. And changing 25% of your water in your tank is always a good idea aswell, it will help fight diesase.

One thing I found about putting on size quickly with fry were numerous small feedings each day. I know that some of the professional breeders will feed as much as 8 - 12 times a day, followed by daily 25%-50% water changes.

The biggest thing to remember here is small feedings as overfeeding, even with the frequent water changes can have a tendancy (sp?) to pollute the water very quickly.

You know you're feeding enough when you can see the bulge in the fry's stomach.

Jim

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Water, taken in moderation, cannot hurt anybody. -- Mark Twain