Platies

[butterfly_koi]

Usually it takes about a month for the fry to develop in the female, before she gives birth. There isn't really anything you can do to help them other than feed well and keep the tank clean.

Very true sometimes and I mean only sometimes if a female is getting close to giving birth I will put her in my nursery tank which is at a warmer temp usually when I do she will give birth that night. this will not work if the female is in the early stages of pregnancy. Just as Maxwell said, feed well and clean water will help in more ways than you can imagine

 

[butterfly_koi]

Yeah good point. They could always take them to a friends tank or something. With breeding livebearers, it's not bigger tanks that is better, but more tanks. It is important to seperate fry and adults, and sexes.

That's why I posted earlier that I thought I could just have one tank but that didn't work out so well I have three set up just to control everything. But I keep my females in my 29 in case they do happen to drop the fry have more room to hide in

 

[phoenixkiller]

Even if you could breed them and keep everything under control, you would still have a lot of fry to care for, and plenty of ones that are too small to be given away/sold. A breeding project that is any scale at all should have a tank to allow plenty of room for fry that are too small to be moved. It's just not a good idea.

If anything, two 10 gallons would be a great idea, just saying.

 

[maxwellag]

Even if you could breed them and keep everything under control, you would still have a lot of fry to care for, and plenty of ones that are too small to be given away/sold. A breeding project that is any scale at all should have a tank to allow plenty of room for fry that are too small to be moved. It's just not a good idea.

If anything, two 10 gallons would be a great idea, just saying.

Not if you took them to the LFS right away. You'd have a lot of fry regardless of tank size. It's not a bad idea. 2 10 gallons would be better than a single 20 because separating the fry to grow out in another tank is best.

 

[jetajockey]

Normally you'll have to grow fry out a month or two before they are worth selling. A lfs might take newborns but you wont optimize their value in that way.

That said, a 10g is plenty big for a platy trio. Even with fry it can be done but its not really ideal.

If the goal is breeding large amounts of fish then the key is water volume. Its not expensive, a 20g utility tub is under 10 bucks and can handle more fry than a trio can produce.

Also I wouldn't consider platies as a large livebearer, of the popular ones maybe medium. Swordtails and mollies are much larger. Every platy I've kept has been about the sane length as their female guppy counterparts.