pregnancy. what to do?

[Chapin]

Hi guys, 2 of my female platys are pregnant, but one is almost at the point of giving birth. i bought her little box and i put her in but she was really nervous. She didn t like it. So i removed her from there, her little black sport behind her belly is getting darker. when do i put her back? what if i leave her too long in her box? how long do i leave her in there? How long do i leave the babies in? (the little bow is a floating one)


Thank you in advance for your advices and sorry for all the questions

El Chapin

 

[Alaris]

What size tank do you have? Do you want to keep the fry? What about the fry next month and the month after that? Do you have room for all of that fry? Do you have any type of moss or any heavily planted places for the fry to hide in the tank?

 

[Johnny Tuttle]

What about leaving the box for the fry to enter themselves post-partum?

 

[newfound77951]

What about leaving the box for the fry to enter themselves post-partum?

I doubt they would on their own.

Alaris has a good point. Unless you're willing to raise lots and lots of baby platies (with new ones arriving every month or so), I'd just let things happen on their own. If your tank is peaceful with lots of hiding places, then some may make it anyway. I had a baby guppy make it in a heavily planted 55 with some big rainbowfish that chase down food like they've never eaten before. She must have been a smart little fish.

 

[Zagz]

Moved to the breeding forum.

 

[OldMan]

When I want to save livebearer fry, I put the female in a separate birthing tank that has lots of hiding places. It avoids the stress on the female and gives the fry a good chance to survive. Once the birth is over, I move mama back to the larger tank and let the fry grow big enough to survive in the main tank. Alaris has a good point about not producing more fry than you can easily care for. There is little point to having 50 fry grow too big for the grow out tank and have no place for them. It would be better to have just a few survive to grow up and not have an overcrowded tank that makes everyone in it unhealthy. For small survival rates that will work in most cases, you can provide dense cover in a few places in the main tank and a few of the fry will survive. The rest will be removed by all the hungry fish in the tank.

 

[mgamer20o0]

those little breeder boxes for me tend to cause more problems then good. if you really want to keep the fry put it in its own tank. if not leave it. trust me even if you leave it in the tank some fry should survive. i started with 8 and in the last 6 months i have given away 50 of them and i still have another 50-75 left.

 

[Johnny Tuttle]

Let me please add this; when I mentioned I wanted 1 M & 2 F guppies in my 21, folks here told me that I'd be overrun with fry, and I still plowed ahead. I underestimated completely how many fry I'd get. I have 5 3-4 week old fry and 12-15 4-day old guppy fry now, and I wouldn't be shocked to get fry yet from my 2 female platties even though the male was one of two unfortunate losses from my new tank.

Even if you think the current fry rate is acceptable, every additional livebearer seems to raise the rate exponentially.

I'm worried I'm going to get a cruel label here, but I've already started two separate threads in which I ask for advice on fish to add to my tank to specifically eat fry.