Unexpected Arrivals

fineanimal

fineanimal

AC Members
Jun 23, 2007
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Minnesota
Well, you learn something new every day in this hobby....

I thought I had all male fish, to avoid breeding, since I have no idea what I'd do with unexpected arrivals. The other day I bought a Blue Platy, and specifically asked for a male, as usual. After acclimation I released him, and immediately noticed a baby Platy chilling out on the other side of the tank. All my Platies are different, so it was easy to identify the mother/culprit--it was a perfect, tiny, copy of my Red Platy! I guess she was pregnant when I bought her 3 weeks ago.

That was shocking enough, but then I looked at all my Platies and suddenly noticed the difference between male and female. I had previously added all FEMALE Platies, not male! I guess people at the store didn't know the difference either. Of course, it didn't take long for that brand new, very happy Blue Platy to start chasing the girls all over the tank.

So I returned the Blue Platy to the store (too bad--he had beautiful colors). My question is, what are we supposed to do with babies that survive? Starting a new tank is a slippery slope I don't want to slide down, but what else do people do with unexpected arrivals in their tanks?
 
the same thing happened to one of my platies, I bought 5 about 2 weeks ago and now I have 10 little fry. I thought I knew which ones were the females but I am not sure... except for one thing I noticed that the other 2 females seem very bloated... they even seem very labored while swimming?
is this a sign of them about to give birth?

and if this may help your question, I bought a breeder net (about $6-$7) I only though I had 3 also but after catching them in an ultra-fine net I now have 9 in net and 1 outside still. i'm not sure what I am going to do with mine either, I have a 55 gal tank on one side. but I wanted some different fish too.
the babies look funny with the little black eyes on the sides of their heads...
 
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I'm not sure, but two of my Platys became bloated soon after I got them, and one was the probable mother of the fry that survived. I guess the other fry got eaten or died.

As for male & female, once I finally saw a male there was no problem telling them apart. The male looks like you'd expect a male to look. It's not a subtle difference in the anal fins; the females have a fin, and the males have... well, you know....
 
Put the fry into the Betta tank he'll take care of them most likely.

Think of it as free food.

A lot of us raise fish,in my case Convicts, just so we can feed the fry to out pred type fish. Cheaper and safer then feeders from the store.
 
you could always get some friends into the hobby and give them the platy fry that survive

your LFS will probably take them from you, but they may give you credit. you may want to ask them, because you are going to get alot of platy fry...

you can always use them as feeders (edit...IceH2O beat me to it :D)
 
Oh, I don't know if I could feed them to another fish. They're so cute.

But then again, a little cuteness goes a long way, and I'm probably going to see a lot more fry...
 
thats about where I am at now... BTW, what is the best, cheapest source of food...(besides flake powder) I saw dapnia, and zooplankton, I know the latter is for reef tanks I think but what would you think?
I have also tried feeding them very, very finely cut shrimp (frozen)
and they seemed to like that a lot...
any other ideas???
 
they get less cute when they grow up and have babies of their own.
argh.

we finally broke the reproduction cycle and haven't had new babies in a long time... so long that our last set of babies are the size of their parents!
 
just don't go out of your way to save them, and you won't have to worry about having too many.
 
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