Female Platy being harrassed by Male Platy

[Cinder]

This is my first post here - I've been lurking, reading and learning for a while. I have a 55 gln., and 20 gln. community tanks and a 10 gln. "extra" that is now being used to raise Platy and Guppy fry.
I have one male and one female Platy in the 55 gln. The male constantly harasses the female - will not leave her alone. I know that there should be several females for each male so that he will have several to bother giving the females a break from time to time. Once the Platy fry are large enough I will add them to the tank so he has more females to divide his attention. That won't be for another couple of months. So ... my question:
Should I move the female to the 20 gln. until I can add other females with her back to the 55 gln. or just leave her with the lovelorn male? Which do you think would be less stressful for her? Thanks for any help.

 

[TomK2]

Your call. The female will probably drop fry in the 20 gal tank too, they can drop fry a number of times without a male. You could very carefuly pick out one or two more females at the LFS and add them. Why wait for the fry to grow up?

 

[Elle2]

Yes, adding even one more female might be enough. What about moving the male instead? What do you have in the 20G? I am really lucky, I have only one male and femail platies but so far the male doesn't harass her... maybe he's too young to know what he's supposed to do

 

[Cinder]

reply

I do want more fry so moving her has nothing to do with stopping her from having more fry. It's just to give her some relief from this boyfriend of hers until I can add other females to give him multiple "targets". I hate spending more money on other females when I have several right here - they just aren't big enough to move into the community tank yet.