WOW my platy DID have babies!!!! - AND NOW AGAIN!

[aquanewbie72]

well I never ever imagined I'd be posting on THIS forum but here I am.

Heres the deal - I have a 10 gallon tank with 2 platys and 2 panda corys. One of the platys is a red-wag and the other is yellow/orange with some black - I think they called it "Calico" in the LFS. I haven't had them that long - maybe a month or so.

Anyway, this morning I wake up. Flip on the tank light. I'm sleepily peering into the tank when this little clear looking worm thing with a splash of red passes by. And I am totally freaking out - I'm thinking AAH I've got worms or maggots or something in my tank! And thats when it stops and I realize its got a little black EYE. OMG I did a double take and it took off towards the filter intake and it was GONE.

So anyway, I stood there and stood there and stood there and concentrated intently on the tank and I never saw it again or anything else like it. I opened the filter box and didn't see anything in there. I hunted so long, I was an hour late for work. *SIGH*

I'm just feeling awful cuz I didn't even have a clue I even had a male/female pair. I didn't know one of them was pregnant so I was totally unprepared. Seriously I didn't think I would ever have mating because I've just got 1 plastic plant (that is aqua blue - it doesn't even LOOK real) and a couple plastic/resin decorations (a rock, a shipwreck, and a mermaid) and do absolutely nothing to make the tank especially romantic. LOL OK You're probably thinking "HELLO WHAT IS YOUR QUESTION???"

My questions are:
1) I'm an idiot and don't even know how to tell which one of my platys is the girl. To be honest, I didn't think they would mate even if they WERE boy/girl because they were 2 different colors. [yep, go ahead and laugh](heck until I got on the computer this morning, I didn't even know if platys laid eggs or were livebearers). I have pictures of them on home computer - don't think I have any in my Photobucket account that I can access at work- but I'll look and post them if I have them.
2) In the future, how can I tell she is pregnant and when she's ready to deliver?
3) What equipment / foods do I need to have ready for delivery?
4) Or did I hallucinate/imagine this whole thing and should I actually be at home in bed instead of researching breeding fish on work time?

THANKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[rich311k]

A female has two normal looking anal fins a male has one that is long and stick like. You need to provide some protection for the babies or move them to a seperate tank. It is more than possible that you have fry Mollys generally just need water in order to breed.

A female will get very round in the belly, almost squarish when she is very pregnant.

[aquanewbie72]

A female will get very round in the belly, almost squarish when she is very pregnant.

omg it all makes sense now - And my husband and I just laughed at her cuz we thought she was a pig. I guess that means the calico one is the female.
What is the "gravid spot" that I read somewhere on here - is that some kind of spots they get to indicate they are pregnant? Do platys have that? What does it look like?

SORRY I'm asking so many questions - I'm just very VERY excited about the potential to be a FISH GRANDMA!



EDIT - 6:15 PM - AAAHHH I just got home and this morning was NOT a hallucination! I saw another tiny tiny TINY fish - its not the one I saw this morning but this is DEFINITELY a living breathing fry. This one appears to be black and the one I saw this morning was clear with some red. I saw him disappear into a plastic tree stump decoration.

So now my dilemma - leave him alone and hope for the best - or should I lift that decoration up and see if there is more in there and get them to safety???

EDIT 9:30 pm - Well, I ran to PetSmart and got a breeder box and some fry food not even knowing if I had any fry for sure.
Came home, divided the parents away from the decoration where I suspected my babies were and lifted it up.... one little guy swam out. I scooped him and put him in the box where he is now resting safely and - HEY he even ate some food!!!

Heres a pic - sorry he is so blurry but you know how hard it is to get pix of fry. I added the nice yellow arrow so you can identify which fuzzy blur is him/her..........




and heres another one - thats the baby in the lower left hand corner of the box

[Puriti]

Awesome ^^ It's so cute! lol

[rich311k]

Congrats!!!

[aquanewbie72]

I am just completely flabbergasted that something so TINY is a living thing. Thats what impresses me more than anything is its size. I mean seriously, there are flakes of food bigger than this thing. LOL

I'm having one problem - I have caught "mom" and "dad" several times trying to RAM the breeding box to get at the poor thing. It must be terrified. And I'm afraid they are going to knock the box loose from the wall of the tank (its only held up by suction cups) and get him. Is this sort of aggression normal? and should I maybe put up a tank divider to keep the other fish away from the box?

[hsherman1986]

just wanted to put my two cents in...my dwarf platy just had her babies (this was expected for me, i knew she was about to pop)! I am soooo excited, my boyfriend keeps laughing at me, i am so excited right now lol. She had five healthy babies, one stillborn/dead by the time we got to them. They are now in a breeding box in the molly tank with the molly fry that i randomly found earlier in the week. They are so cute and small, all five are orange so far.

[mrspughster]

It is exciting to find fry in the tank. I have been doing that ALL week. Now have about 45 fry in my 10g nursery tank. My son laughs at me for "staring" at the tank all the time. He tries to help me but he usually just finds floating fish poop lol. Congrats on your fry. Watching them grow into adults neat also.

[Skyrmir]

I have that same breeder box myself, I found that putting a thin layer of gravel in the bottom of it blocks the view a bit so the other fish don't bother the fry as much. And it seemed to calm the fry having 'ground' under them.

congrats on your new baby!!!

my platys have never given birth. I think my mollys did though because they were always so fat. I never saw any fry though. I do know that one molly died during childbirth

I hope my new platies will have babies!!!


Did you name the fry yet?

[aquanewbie72]

Did you name the fry yet?

No we haven't named him/her yet.... although we have been joking about calling it "Jaws" LOL

[OceanMaiden]

Big question I thought Id ask here as we were talking about Platy babies. I dont know what to feed them. I mean I can't just run down to the store and buy a jar of gerber baby platyy food. LOL So what do they eat?? what can I stuffem with? I WILL NOT feed frozen food as Im just getting rid of a nematode infestation FROM the frozen foods that killed my previous fry. So no more frozen. Any suggestions??

[aquanewbie72]

I'm feeding my baby this stuff called "First Bites" - its made by Hikari. It comes in a little zip-lock pouch and I got mine at PetSmart in the food section with all the other fish foods.
Then sometimes for variety, I take ONE just regular Tetra flake (like I feed my adults) and crush it up into tiny pieces and throw it in. My fry eats both vigorously!

[OceanMaiden]

Thanks aqua newbie....I must run to petco and get it soon as two of my platys are still pregnant and they are very round and close to birthing. I still cant believe that they can have so many babies in one pregnancy :0 If each of my remaining preggers platys have 20 babies too I will have 40 fish!!!


GOODNESS!! Wish my lil water mums luck!!

With platys a tell tell sign that they are fixing to drop there babys is the anual area will start to look squared off almost like a box shape in the anual area. Then there will be a white tube looking thing ticking down . Once this is een then it's between 2 to 8 hrs. before they start to drop. They can drop 1 to 50 in a fry.

[aquanewbie72]

Best of luck Ocean Maiden! Keep us posted!

And thanks Weasel for the tip - now I will know what to look for if she gets pregnant again. This one caught be totally by surprise- thats why I only have one fry (unless there was only 1 to begin with - I guess I"ll never know.)

[hsherman1986]

well, update on my part, i had 11 platy babies and 1 single molly baby before i went on vacation. When I got back, i gained five more molly babies, and one red wagtail platy baby. My dwarf platy is about to have more babies, and both of my mickey mouse platies are about to have babies.

I need to start figuring out what i am going to do with these guys...

[rich311k]

Congrats!!!

[aquanewbie72]

Hey guess what - I'm pretty sure my platy is preggo again! Maybe I'll be able to save more than one fry this time....
Does anyone know what is the gestation period for a platy?

[aquanewbie72]

Well never mind, this morning - I spotted another fry! Just one AGAIN! Maybe she is only having one at a time???

So now I've got a fry who is a little less than a month old, and this new one who is less than 24 hours old. I assume I can keep them happily in the breeder box together??? Or should I divide the box and keep them apart? I don't think my month-old fry would eat the new one, right!??!!!?