i recently bought 2 types of fish.. think one is a platy not sure on the others

The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an interest in aquariums or fish keeping!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.

court

Aquarium Advice Newbie
Joined
Apr 30, 2023
Messages
5
IMG_6846.jpgIMG_6848.jpgIMG_6849.jpgIMG_6850.jpg IMG_6852.jpg



Hi i recently bought my daughter some fish dont really have any idea what fish they are, think some are platys but yesterday i noticed baby fish swimming around? i counted around 11. Not sure when they was born how old they are or who birthed them.. some are see through and some are like black and bigger ?? not sure what to do with them
 
Some of the fish are platys. If you can get a clearer close up of the other fish i could have a better stab at identifying them. Maybe a pearl danio? Someone will be able to identify them.

The fry will be platys. At least one platy is female, and the likelihood is she was already pregnant when you got it. They birth live young and so are more likely to survive in aquariums than fry from egg laying fish. Eggs tend to get eaten before they hatch. Going forward, female platys store sperm and can produce 3 or 4 batches of fry for upto a year after breeding. If you dont seperate M/F they will breed over and over. When fry get about 4 monrhs old they will also breed and also produce fry, those fry will also breed, etc etc. You can quickly get overrun with platys.

What do you want to do? Are you interested in keeping the fish and continue to let them breed?

A fish store might take the newcomers off you once they are of a size for them to sell.

If you dont want to keep producing fry you will need to seperate M/F fish into seperate tanks before they get to breeding age. Regardless the female you have could have another 3 batches of fry, if that happens you will again need to seperate them out.

If you dont want fish that breed then livebearing fish like platys, guppies, mollys and swordtails should be avoided, or at least stick to single sex. Preferably male so you dont run the risk of buying already pregnant fish. If you want to breed fish then livebearers are good fish to try this with. Put a few livebearers in a tank and you will get more livebearers. You will need more tanks to move fish to as your population grows, or find someone to take them off your hands. Unfortunately livebearers are easily bred and pretty common, so they wont sell for much. You might find a store willing to give a little store credit for them, or possibly someone who feeds live fish to carnivorous fish might want them.

If you dont want them, and you cant get rid of them, then euthanising them is probably the only other choice.
 
Some of the fish are platys. If you can get a clearer close up of the other fish i could have a better stab at identifying them. Maybe a pearl danio? Someone will be able to identify them.

The fry will be platys. At least one platy is female, and the likelihood is she was already pregnant when you got it. They birth live young and so are more likely to survive in aquariums than fry from egg laying fish. Eggs tend to get eaten before they hatch. Going forward, female platys store sperm and can produce 3 or 4 batches of fry for upto a year after breeding. If you dont seperate M/F they will breed over and over. When fry get about 4 monrhs old they will also breed and also produce fry, those fry will also breed, etc etc. You can quickly get overrun with platys.

What do you want to do? Are you interested in keeping the fish and continue to let them breed?

A fish store might take the newcomers off you once they are of a size for them to sell.

If you dont want to keep producing fry you will need to seperate M/F fish into seperate tanks before they get to breeding age. Regardless the female you have could have another 3 batches of fry, if that happens you will again need to seperate them out.

If you dont want fish that breed then livebearing fish like platys, guppies, mollys and swordtails should be avoided, or at least stick to single sex. Preferably male so you dont run the risk of buying already pregnant fish. If you want to breed fish then livebearers are good fish to try this with. Put a few livebearers in a tank and you will get more livebearers. You will need more tanks to move fish to as your population grows, or find someone to take them off your hands. Unfortunately livebearers are easily bred and pretty common, so they wont sell for much. You might find a store willing to give a little store credit for them, or possibly someone who feeds live fish to carnivorous fish might want them.

If you dont want them, and you cant get rid of them, then euthanising them is probably the only other choice.



Hi thank you for replying, i am going to buy another tank tomorrow to move the babys into as i am told the others will eat them? so far they are doing good at hiding just not sure how long they have been there haha. I am not really looking to breed fish but will try to keep the baby alive till they are old enough to give away, is it normal for some of the fry to be darker than the others? i wasnt sure if two fish had gave birth, here is the only
other picture i have at the minute, will take more when im home IMG_6835.jpg
 
The 2 small slim fish look like White Cloud Mountain minnows

The black and yellow fish is a Xiphophorus variatus platy
The pale orange fish is a female Xiphophorus maculatus platy.
They are both types of platy but different species. They both come in heaps of different colours. I can't tell what sex the X. variatus is but if you look at the anal (bottom) fin, if it's long and straight then it's a male. If it's fan/ triangle shaped it's a female. Or post another picture of it showing a side view of the fish and we should be able to tell you what sex it is.

-----------------

Make sure you do regular partial water changes. I recommend 50-75% each week on an established aquarium. Basically remove 50-75% of the old water and replace it with dechlorinated water.

If the tank is newly set up (less than 6 weeks old), do water changes every couple of days.

If you don't have a gravel cleaner, look into getting one to help you clean the gunk out of the gravel while the gravel remains in the tank. The following link has a picture of a basic gravel cleaner. Get something like that.
https://www.about-goldfish.com/aquarium-cleaning.html

-----------------

Did the shop tell you how to clean the filter?
If not, tell us what type of filter you have and we can walk you through the process of cleaning it.

-----------------

The baby platies can eat powdered fry food (finely crushed up flakes), newly hatched brineshrimp and microworms. You can also put some live plants in their tank for them to feed on the micro-organisms living on the plants.

The following link has information about newly hatched brineshrimp and microworms.
https://www.aquariumadvice.com/forums/f82/back-to-basics-when-breeding-fish-380381.html#post3578561

If you put a dark picture on the back of the tank (on the outside of the glass), it will make the fish feel more comfortable and they will show better colours.
 
Hi, its hard to get a pictures of the black and yellow its very nervous, i think its female and i think maybe it was her who was pregnant as she was hiding a lot… i am on my way over to pets at home to get a bigger tank to cycle to move the big fish into, im not sure what the filter is as it just came with the tank like a starter kit but this morning the filter is not working and making a funny sound? is there an easy way to catch the babys to maybe put into a breeder tank to make it easier to clean the tank out as i dont want to accidentally hurt any of them as they hide in the gravel alot. Will it be the platys that was pregnant and not the others? is there anyway to tell how old the babys are? i counted 11 the other day but at the minute i cannot see or count them all because of the plants but i seen around 6 still today
thank you
 
Have you been doing any maintenance on the filter? They need to be periodically serviced. Rinse any filter media, wipe off any moving parts like the impeller, impeller shaft, impeller cap etc. I do this every 1 or 2 months. If you dont, flow rate will decrease over time, the impeller will wear, lose balance, and start to wobble and rattle against the housing at which point it will start to wear even quicker and probably need replacing.
 
Have you been doing any maintenance on the filter? They need to be periodically serviced. Rinse any filter media, wipe off any moving parts like the impeller, impeller shaft, impeller cap etc. I do this every 1 or 2 months. If you dont, flow rate will decrease over time, the impeller will wear, lose balance, and start to wobble and rattle against the housing at which point it will start to wear even quicker and probably need replacing.



Hi i cleaned the filter out today and bought a bigger tank and filter to transfer the big fish over to once its ready i also bought a gravel cleaner and cleaned most of the water x
 
Back
Top Bottom