Pregnant?

[PurpleSmurf]

I'm pretty sure my gold crescent platy is pregnant (Yay!) but I'm not 100% sure, just 90% because of the way she's been balooning up.

How soon should I expect her to pop? (And as would follow: how soon should I begin to grow brine shrimp/ prepare fry food?)

What should I do to prep my tank? It's mid-cycle; I had .25 nitrite this afternoon but have done a 10% and a 20% change since.

Would buying another tank to place the expecting mother in be wise? I could perform two 50% changes into it, transfer from substrate and keep.... something inside to keep the cycle going.

Bwahg! Help the breeding newb!

 

[Billsgate]

No idea when she's going to pop, but it does look like she's pregnant. For platy fry you probably don't even need special fry food, just crush up some flake food. At birth they are large enough to immediatly start taking crushed up flakes. You could get some powdered food though, to start 'em off on.
If you would like to save as many fry as possible, buy yourself a breeding net to hang in your tank and put her in. Once she has given birth, remove her. Otherwise the fry may become food.

HTH!

 

[kaaikop]

If your tank is well planted, you don't need to do anything special. They will find
plenty of hiding places, and will find something to eat one way or another (algea,
leftovers, etc.)

I have some in my community tank, some 3 weeks old, some just born, they are
doing fine without my intervention. Females seem to be always pregnant! they
drop a new baby almost every other day! If you look closely at your pregnant
females, you should see some black spots in their abdomen. I think these are the
eyes of the little ones... kinda cool huh?

OH! and Welcome to AA!!!!

 

[littletank]

Hey purplesmurf! Yeah, she looks pregnant. She'll go about thirty days from the day she's impregnated before delivering, at least mine does. She has babies then thirty days later she babies again. We're on our fifth pregnancy. Sunkist, my mom platy is the same kind of platy as yours. She gets REALLY big and you can almost count the babies in her belly before they're born!

Check every day for her stomach to flat. If she's skinny, then she's had the babies. You have to stir up the gravel a bit with your net in order to find them. This is when you can "rescue" them so they don't get eaten. However, like kaaikop said, if your tank is big and well planted with lots of hiding spots, thy may survive, at least some will.

My tank is only a ten gallon with six plants and one rock cave and they seem to get eaten by the zebra danios if I don't rescue them into a little 2.5 gallon I have.

Oh, and watch out for your filter. I keep count of my fry and when one goes missing--I check the filter. Just flick him back into the water and he should be okay. Good luck and have fun!
littletank