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Hi Whetu, you should always try to keep your different fish in seperate tanks, Tropicals with tropicals,livebearers with livebearers, Chiclids with chiclids,marine with marines etc, this stops cross infection of fish with different bodily functions, Platies have alot different needs to tropicals and is best to keep them seperate. I know that a lot of people mix species in a tank, but it only leeds to disapointment further down the track. Its a ploy to sell you more fish later on when your mixed tank crashes. Good luck. Muss

Platys and other live bearers are e to parasites. Definitely quarantine them for atleast 2 weeks.Before I started quarantineing live bearers I ended up with; gill flukes, velvet, dropsy, unknown worms, camallanus worms. Killed a whole load of fish. so be carefull, and choose healthy stock. it should be fine if you amke sure you qurantine them for about 2 weeks. If everything is fien and they are eating well, you can put them in after about 1 1/2 weeks. Platys love algae wafers, frozen brine shrimp. algae flakes, normal flakes. Everything really! I brought home a platy the other day and after a week found 2 babys in the tank, must have some pregnatn from the shop, bacause it was the only fish in htere. Feed the babys on frozen or live baby brine shrimp, and crushed tiny flakes and algae flakes. Theya re not hard to raise. One of mine died . . . It was being nippe dby th other one and wasn't getting any food.:~
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Good Luck!

Labrakitty

Whetu, platies are really tough fish from my experience...like guppies, they will dump a load of fry every 28-32 days...I think they are also the same in the fact that they can continue to be pregnant without a male present...like you've already found out they will continue to multiply...Leslie found out that female bettas find that fry are quite yummy, and help to keep the population down...Best of luck, and enjoy!!! Heidi :%)

"I've got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom." Thomas Carlyle

Whetu... welcome to the joy of platies... I was joking for awhile that everytime I used the gravel vac I found more fry. Then we moved from a 10g to a 55g and found 13 fry while clearing out the 10g. So, we started with 5 platies and now have about 35. And in the past year 4 of our original 5 have died. They were full sized when we got them so who knows how old they were. I would suggest pulling out some of your plants if you want more to get eaten in the future. We have quite a bit of floating hornwort in our tank and typically see about 3 more platies per month. We also have a gold gourami who will hunt down the fry pretty well. She's big enough that she's taken care of fry that were at least 3 weeks old. At this point, I do nothing special for them... I don't crush up flakes, no special food, etc. If they survive then it was meant to be. So, good luck with your platies. And if anyone in Georgia wants any let me know!

-Beth

Oh my goodness! My platy population just doubled!

I moved the adults out of their Q-tank into the community tank just now. As I was getting ready to empty the Q-tank I noticed 4 little babies swimming around! Then I noticed another in the filter! So my population has gone from 4 to 9 platies in a little over a week

I really don't have the heart to net the little guys and feed them to my ravenous barbs... so I guess my Q tank is now a fry tank... oh dear it's started already. I'm in trouble now

*goes out to buy 12 more tanks*

you always could just get a Jack Dempsy or a Green Terror to take care of the fry

"The fish in my community tank have a varied diet of flake, crumbles, spirulina discs, Novo Tab, frozen blood worms, fresh shrimps, garden snails and a variety of fresh fruit and vegetables. "

Holy cow, they eat better than I do. They really enjoy vegetable matter IME, including spirulina/algae dics. There's really nothing much to say on platies--they're pretty darned hard to kill. Small, attractive fish, easy to keep, baby machines, live rather short lives, etc.

That's just silly Muss... Live bearers are tropicals... They have the same kinds of disease and need the same kinds of water as all the other fish sold as tropcial (with the exception of the very rare mollies bred in brakish and marine water)... Theres no disease that livebearers can get that other tropical fish can't and vice versa, if there is please correct me.

Last edited by john.stone at 10-Dec-2004 23:36

Muss, do you mean that platies aren't tropicals? Or that I should keep my tropical egg-layers and tropical live-bearers seperate?

I'm not sure I understand the reasoning for this... I have a community tank that has several different varieties of fish in it already. Are you suggesting I keep each one in a species tank?

Hi all you livebearer keepers.

I've just done the big no-no and made a spontaneous purchase of 4 platies to add to my community tank. I've read their profile on here, but what else I need to know? What do you wish you knew when you first got platies?

I have 1 male and 3 females, currently in quarantine in a 5-gallon tank. They came out of brackish water at the lfs and are being gradually acclimatised to fresh before going into my community tank. How long should this process take? Right now they have 1 tablespoon of salt to 5 gallons of water. I was thinking of doing a 20 - 25% change each day for a week... how does that sound?

The community tank is around 32 US gallons, planted, with very soft water and a pH of around 7.0. The occupants are gold barbs and clown loaches (yes I know they'll need a bigger tank eventually! ) I'm thinking the other fish will gobble up the platy fry and avoid over-population. Will this plan work?

Any other hints & tips?

Thanks,
whetu

Hey

I've noticed livebearers do tend to carry more issues depending on the suorce. A lot of places keep them in over-crowded tanks with inappropriate M/F ratios resulting in stress, which of course makes them a little more e to disease if bought from a store like that. Also might have frayed fins from nipping which might become infected etc. I just QT mine for ten days and call it good. By then any sort of common nasties should have reared their ugly head. If you have prized fish in your tank it really is best to go with a 3 week QT. Better to lose some fish than a tank full.

Diet sounds great, and they will be more than able to compete the little piggies!



Koi

Empty chairs at empty tables, the room silent, forlorn.

Thanks for your replies everyone

My community tank is already fairly heavily planted and has plenty of driftwood with hidey-holes, so I guess I should be prepared for the population to grow by a platy or two every month. oh darn! Knew I should have thought harder before getting into the live-bearer business!

fish_food, apparently they do better in hard, slightly alkaline, brackish water but they should be ok in my soft, neutral water too. These are locally bred so I hope they are fairly well adapted to my local conditions. As for keeping all the babies, I wish I could too but I'm afraid I'd run out of space for them very soon! In fact probably after the first batch

Koi, thanks for the tips

1. They're in a quarantine tank now and will be there for a few more days. I was planning on a week total in quarantine. How long would you recommend? Are live-bearers especially e to carrying disease?

2. The fish in my community tank have a varied diet of flake, crumbles, spirulina discs, Novo Tab, frozen blood worms, fresh shrimps, garden snails and a variety of fresh fruit and vegetables. I don't know how well the platies will compete with their rather boisterous tank-mates for the food but I guess I'll only find out when they're all in together.

3. I've heard people say that female platies and female sword-tails are hard to tell apart. Fortunately I don't plan to make any more unplanned purchases so this shouldn't be a problem.

1. You've probably already got them in the tank but I am pretty big on Quarantining Livebearers anymore.

2. Food; seems like people doom their livebearers to flake foods. For really great size, color, and health feed them sinking spirulina tablets, shrimp ellets, tubifex worms, etc... These are foods your other tank inhabitants will love as well and they will really make a difference in the appearence, behavoir, and health of the fish.

3. Avoid mixing swords in when you make your next unplanned purchase

Not really much to these guys an easy active fish to keep

Koi

Empty chairs at empty tables, the room silent, forlorn.

I always thougt platies needed hard water. Am I wrong here?
Anyway, I love platies, they were some of my first fish. Unfortunetly I had 5 of them crammed in a 2 gallon tank! I love the different color varieties and I am soon going to start a breeding project with them and other livebearers. They are very playful and full of spunk. They are GREAT fish! I just hate it, though, when you can't save all the babies. Poor little guys. Good luck with them.

Livebearer fry are really really good at hiding. The gold barbs would most likely eat the fry when they are first born, but since their mouths aren't particularly big, once the fry grow, the barbs cannot eat them anymore. I don't know how much of a dent the loaches will make in the baby population. Livebearers are good at eating their fry too, so I doubt you'll have a big boom in population. Don't be surprised if every week one of your females gives birth to several dozen fry. My guppy populations grows about a guppy every month (even if I do feed them to my larger fish).

Have fun with the platies!

Last edited by solublefish at 06-Dec-2004 15:33

Your plan sounds fine. The 1:3 ratio is also good; it'll keep the females from becoming over-stressed.

i havent done anything special for my plattys, i just try to remove them before they give birth, but sometimes i dont get to them that fast, with doing that, i think i got 1 fry from a female, the other female's fry dissapeared in a matter of hours, if u want to keep fry, but not alot, just put in some items, like caves, rockpiles, plants, ect, platty fry like to stay tord the bottom of the tank when there are preditors about, guppies get on leaves and stay pretty much strict on the top of the water, thats why more plattys survive than guppies