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How many little ones can a single female give birth to at a time? While doing a water change today I found a single little one.

well depends, how many males, and are u really breeding with conditioning, or is it something that just happened.

given i from my past spawns see from 5-30 young, but that may be just me.

also, more info would be good, like tank size, numbers/ and types of fish.

Last edited by bettachris at 19-Sep-2005 18:02

In my experience, a mature female platy,
think 2-3 inches, will deliver anywhere in the range of 30-100 young, sometimes in a short period of time (several hours) to as long as over the period of about a week.
Younger females will deliver substantially less fry the younger they are.
Female platys are capable of delivering around 10-30 fry by the age of about 6 months.
Also, if you have other fish than the platys in the tank, it is likely the fry have been eaten.
Try to add lots of fine leaved plants, floating and planted to give the fry refugia to hide in.
Adult platys will also consume fry with great zeal.


Last edited by So_Very_Sneaky at 19-Sep-2005 18:22

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...sometimes in a short period of time (several hours) to as long as over the period of about a week.

I’m sorry, I disagree with this statement, no female platy will deliver babies within a week. She will deliver not over a day. I agree with the rest though.


ronn

It's a 20g tank, Currently stocked with 2 platys. 1 male, 1 female, and 1 dwarf gourami.

It's a brand new tank, and due to my being a newb I put them in prematurly. it turns out I had a bad ammonia test kit that was giving me false readings. I got results that said ammonia and nitrite were approx 0, so I thought it was done cycling. This caused stress, which helped an Ich breakout. but that's a whole different thread, what it has to do with this topic is that the gourami was acting strangly, he wasn't eating at feeding time. I thought it was a reaction to the meds, but possibly he was eating the fry before I knew they were there.

p.s. The Ich was contained, no serious injuries. I continued the medication and water changes for 4 days after the last sign of Ich, today was the first day after meds stopped and everyone seems to be doing great.

anyway, the female is about 1.5-2 inches. I think she was pregnant when we bought her, we've had the fish for just over 2 weeks now. The male came from the same tank at the LFS, but there were many mixed together.

edit: the tank is full of fake plants, there are quite a few, as well as a turtle decoration thingy that provides pretty good cover. I found a second fry in there.

Last edited by Zaffy at 20-Sep-2005 00:44

...sometimes in a short period of time (several hours) to as long as over the period of about a week.

I’m sorry, I disagree with this statement, no female platy will deliver babies within a week. She will deliver not over a day. I agree with the rest though.


Yes, I have kept many literally dozens of female platys in the net breeder, and sometimes I have had 30-50 babies in period of a few hours, and several times the female has only delivered a few babies every few hours over the period of about a week.
I have been breeding platys for about 2 years now, and this is always the case, sometimes fast, sometimes much slower. Guppies are also the same way, some may drop only a few fry over a weeks time, others will drop them all over a 24 hour period, some will drop them all within just a few hours.


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If that's the case I could say, your platy might be not healthy and it’s not normal. Imagining popping about a week is very stressful for her. Maybe some of your females drops the other fry, just monitor them closely. I am breeding platies too for almost 3 years now, and I maintain 6 females so that I can monitor easily. And none of them drop babies in a week. It will be over in a day.


ronn

well my platys are all very extremely healthy.
Some of my healthiest fish. Havent lost a one in over 2 years. Some are going onto the 3 year old mark now.
I only ever put 1 female in the net breeder at one time, so it cant possibly be a different female dropping the fry in there.
This has happened with more than 1 female at more than one time. I had heard before that it was quite normal for female livebearers to drop fry sporadically from time to time.


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