New to the world of fish

D

dtduncan

AC Members
Mar 11, 2008
3
0
0
50
St. Louis
Hello to all,

I am new to The Aquaria Network.:headbang2: I've had fish in the past but as an uneducated kid and not really dedicated to maintaining a good environment for the fish. Here I am many many many many years later and wiser and more committed. But despite all of my reading and preparing, I still feel overwhelmed. :eek: So after reading so many of your posts I will start of by describing my tank.

I have a 30 Gallon tank - fully cycled
Filter, heater, black/purple gravel
Colloseum centerpiece, 3 types of plants, 4 tunnels made out of tubing burried in the gravel ( fish love these)
Now for the fish:
3 Gold Crescent Mickey Mouse Platy (2 female and 1 male)
2 White MM Platy ( 2 female )
3 Black Widow Tetra
1 Leopard Pleco
3 Ghost Shrimp

Everything has gone very well so far, and I have really gotten alot of tips off of this website and your suggestions but now I am running into a lot of contradiction and lives are at stake. I am sure that you all will be surprised :liar: to learn that all of my platy appear pregnant. Well wouldn't you know it, I came home from work tonight and I was baffeled because one of the white platy I moved to a breeder net looked like it absored her eggs. I was very disappointed. As I begin to turn the breeder net over to let her out ,suddently I notice little fry darting around.:dance: Yeah, my first fry, but it looks like only 4 made it. The "New Mom" is rather small and I was even surprised to see that she was pregnant.

I am afraid that the breeder net is not the best place for the fry but I do not have another tank. I am looking into a 5 or 10 gallon tank. But no promises. I am also not sure about food. So I turn to the professionals for help. I am an open ear to all suggestions.
 
I moved my post from the introduction section to the freshwater. I originallly posted this last night and moved it this morning. This morning my daughter noticed small orange fry in the tank. All of the fish are rumaging through the gravel and the Tetras are at each others necks. Very aggressive with each other. I did move 2 orange fry to the breeder net but how do I find the rest of the survivors? Any other suggestions?
 
If you really want to keep all of the hundreds of fry that they will produce you will need another tank. I usually don't bother trying to save them because I would have way too many to deal with. If trying to keep just some of them the best thing to do is put some plants in for them to hide in. This way only a few will survive. IMO the fry are the best food my fish get.
 
I have seen many postings that talk about the large number of fry, but I have only found 6 fry total. Am I missing a ton or have the rest been eaten?
 
The large numbers of fry that are produced are very real. Your tetras are helping you control the population and by restricting the pregnant female to a space shared with the fry you made them easier for her to find. The only way that you will have large numbers of survivors is if the predator count is fairly low and the fry hav lots of places to hide that nobody else can get to. For my tanks that means a big clump of java moss in 2 tanks and a large clump of hornwort in a third. The community tanks never have any survivors although there are mollies in one of them capable of producing 50 or more every month. The angel, barbs, neons, rasboras and their parents keep them from surviving at all. In a species tank of their own with lots of cover, I would be over-run with them quickly.
The breeder tanks are full of endlers right now. See my avatar for one of my original males.
 
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