Platy fry

[SeanMurphy]

One of my platies dropped today. I have no idea which female it was, because they all still look just as fat as they did this morning. I've got relatively coarse gravel, and I've only counted about 4 fry, as they seem to be hiding in the gravel. With all that cover, should I bother trying to remove them to another tank? It would be near to impossible without dismantling the tank decor. I'd think that since I'd have such a problem getting them, no one else should be able to bother them. The tank is a 29G populated with 8 platys of varying colorations (2 male, 6 female) and a baby pleco along with a handful of MTS. The fry all seem to be buried at least 2 or 3 pebbles deep in the gravel. I don't fully expect them all to make it, but they could probably hold their own under the plant cover, in the rock piles and in the gravel for the few weeks it'll take them to no longer be a tempting treat. Any input?

 

[crazyred]

It's not as hard as you think to get them. I have a 29 gallon, heavily planted tank and I have 6 platies in there 2 M, 3 F. Recently, one of my females dropped some babies, but I've only seen one. I used two fish nets, one to flush him out from where he was hiding and shoo him into the other net. I only uprooted two plants in the process (they had just been planted this week).

My lone platy baby is now sitting in a net breeder eating baby fish food. If you want to raise the fry get two fish nets and go get 'em!! Otherwise, they'll probably get eaten.

 

[SeanMurphy]

I've managed to flush two out in the way you mentioned. I'm sure there's more in there that I haven't found, but they're buried so deep in the gravel, I don't even know where to start digging. I've been poking at random and never seem to unearth anything except MTS younglings. I'll keep at it. How many fry does a female usually drop in one go?

 

[SeanMurphy]

On a side note, would you consider your 29G to be crowded? I've got 8 platys and a pleco and it feels.. not crowded, but, um.. comfortable, to me. I was thinking about adding a colony of guppies, but I was worried about the additional ammonia and stress from crowding.

 

[crazyred]

Yep, my 29 is pretty well overstocked. If you look at my sig. there's tonnes of fishies in there. I'm getting a 55 for christmas and I'm probably going to put the platies in there or start a seperate platy tank. For now...I do frequent pwc's.

It depends on the female platy on the fry, mine dop 'em when I'm not looking and I'm not sure how many get eaten before I can get to them. So far, I now have 5 platy babies in my net breeder. One of my girls had about 15-20 more babies over the weekend and I was only able to get 4. Oh well, snacks for the other fish and population control for me.

 

[SeanMurphy]

About how big or old should fry be before reintroducing to the adult tank? They're still bite sized as of yet, but about how many weeks am I looking at?