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Okay everyone. Laugh at me now.....BUT, it is cruel to keep just boys or just girls when it comes to Platys and Guppies?? I have some platys and now there are babies. I honestly thought they would not survive once born, but there they were when I went to vacuum the gravel. Now I don't want to clean the gravel because I am afraid of killing the babies!! I am considering giving away my girl fishes, but is it cruel to keep the boys alone? Do they get, er, frustrated??? HELP!

You'll probably find that the males will fight
If you want to keep the one sex then female will be much easier, that's what I've done and they're all very happy

Too bad we can't have neutering and spaying for our fish, huh

I agree with keeping all females as opposed to all males.

Even if you get rid of the males though there's the possibility one or more of your females could still be pregnant.

What other fish are in the tank? My platies will eat their own fry, as well as my rams...my blue gourami was the best at getting rid of them. My platies are my oldest fish and I've only had 2 survive and grow up; one because I put it in a breeder trap, the other managed to avoid being eaten by hiding in the plants and strawberry pot.

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There is water at the bottom of the ocean

That's what I've done becuase my mollies are still giving birth. To stop the population growth I got a couple of angels (55 gallon tank)and they all live happily together and no more little suprises. It's quick and painless for the little ones

I still feel bad, knowing they will die. I am such a pansy sometimes!!

we ended up separating our females and males (we used the males to cycle a new tank) and when we added the females in the males were "bothering" the females way too much... to the point that the poor females couldn't eat, too busy running away and hiding. So we put our 2 males in an empty 5gal bow that used to have a Betta and they seem to get along fine... but we have a ton of hornwort floating so I don't think they see each other that much. Now that we have many more fish in our 55gal I think we'll probably add them back in and hope that all the fish take care of extra fry... it seems that about 2-3 from each batch survive. But if it becomes a big problem I may give them to a friend who is just setting up... he's already interested in some fry, too.

-Beth

p.s. If you end up with way too many fry to keep you may want to see if there are any schools nearby that want to take them... science classes are always using animals to study in the classroom and since fish reach maturity and reproduce so quickly they are interesting to use.