Platys

[kraemerwa2003]

Yay, I have been looking around forever for some platys that weren't red wag and I finally found them at WalMart for $1.86 a piece. They are Mickey Mouse Platys and are awesome...I found some red wags at my LFS for $5 a piece...not cool. I'm just excited, had to tell someone that understood what I was talking about.

 

[vidiots]

I once mixed some gold mickey mouse platies with some red wag tail platies. As each generation of fry was born, I'd remove the ones that didn't have even red body color or had various spots on their body or fins. After a couple generations I managed to have some platies that were all nice dark even blood red body and fin color with a nice sharp mickey mouse tail spot pattern. By the 5th or 6th generation a few years later I had them breeding true, meaning 100% of the fry had these traits.

Unfortunately I had a house fire a few years back and the entire strain was lost. I was devistated by having lost them after all that effort. Now I have platies once again, but haven't invested any effort into controlling the breeding like I did the first time.

I'm sure I wasn't the first to do that, and most definately not the last, so there have got to be others out there..

 

[coupedefleur]

I have a strain of platies- blue and orange- that I've ended up with by breeding several generations of them. Some of the older females are about 2-1/2" long and are really fat- when they get bigger their proportions are completely different than when they're little in the store!

I've got way too many of them in a 3' long tank (50? more? I'm going to haul a lot to the next auction I go to).

It's interesting to see how they behave when you've got a bunch in a big tank. They don't really school, but most of them will decide that they should all go somewhere else all at once. They'll all be picking through the val on the bottom right of the tank, then rush over to the right side top, stay there for a while, then go somewhere else. The first time they were all grouped together on the bottom I wondered what was wrong with them!

I've got a similar number of swordtails in a 55, and the only time they're all together is when they're gobbling food. Both types go into a feeding frenzy when food hits the tanks.

I've gone through the same thing several times with trying to get livebearers cheap. Since I end up breeding them, I decided that for me it's just not worth it. A lot of store-bought livebearers don't seem to be raised seperatly from other strains and they don't breed true. I find the odds are better going to a club auction- and if you wait till the end you can get a whole bag of great fish for a buck or two!

 

[vidiots]

I've gone through the same thing several times with trying to get livebearers cheap. Since I end up breeding them, I decided that for me it's just not worth it. A lot of store-bought livebearers don't seem to be raised seperatly from other strains and they don't breed true. I find the odds are better going to a club auction- and if you wait till the end you can get a whole bag of great fish for a buck or two!

Hehehe, just went to my first auction last weekend, and noticed that it works exactly as you said.

 

[coupedefleur]

Hehehe, just went to my first auction last weekend, and noticed that it works exactly as you said.

That's mostly true. If some high-demand fish comes up near the end, people will wake up, but by then 2/3 of the people have already gone home. Sometimes people will be sleeping at the very beginning of an auction too.

You've really got to watch out for auction fever- some people get in a competition and end up paying too much- just like on ebay. I went to a national killie convention auction once and someone I knew spent $75 on a pair of killies. The auctioneer had slightly mispronounced the name. It turned out the winner of the auction was already keeping that species of fish. At least he didn't buy his own fish back for that price! :duh:

 

[mtiller]

i bought a trio of platies the other day, 1 female 2 males (lady was working very hard that day and just grabbed what she could that i picked out) the female turned out to be preggy and dropped 15 (they ravaged one) fry that i did save. she is a blue mickeymouse platy and i have two sunset yellow tipped with orange male mickeymouse platies. and i accidentally bought a 24kt gold molly, i thought the sign said "platy" instead of molly -_-

 

[kraemerwa2003]

lol...well mollies are nice too I lost one of my 5 platys to my filter...I will be covering it with either a stocking or filter cover...She was the one that dropped fry in my tank. However, only 1 made it to the point where I knew they were there and then it got eaten :rollseyes:

 

[mtiller]

aww that's unfortunate, sorry for your loss. i'm trying to raise my fry the best i can. i also have to raise betta fry along with those platy fry (not in same tank of course, growth rates are tooo different)

 

[kraemerwa2003]

I am actually kinda glad that none of the platy fry made it...lol. I have about 75 guppy fry that I'm raising right now. Soon they will be a month old and I still need to get another 10 gallon set-up for the rest of their time here before I sell them.