Albino Platy Fry !

I just discovered 3 days ago that one of my platies gave birth to an albino baby!. Does anybody know if this is relatively common or are they quite rare?. I had a look for some information about albino platies on the internet but didn`t come up with anything of great relevance. I`ve attached a pic of him swimming with his 2 brothers/sisters but as he`s so tiny it was difficult to get a clear view of him & his pink eyes!...he`s very cute!.

very cute! I don't know how rare/common they are but would love it if you would keep track of his growth and keep us posted! you may also want to keep him/her in the long run to see if they produce albino offspring!

Albino platy's are quite rare. if you want to keep a strain of Albino platy's breed it back 2 its brother/sisters you may only get a few albinos to each brood once you have a male and female Albino breed them back to each other .

Albinism is a recessive trait in most animals so chances are that your fish had a parent on each side that carried the gene. If it turns out to be a male, you could bred it back to its mother and expect to get about half albino fry from the cross back. If you seriously want to start a new line breeding of albinos, try isolating the female so that she can purge herself of the sperm packets she is already carrying while the fry grows up. If your fry turns out to be a female, breeding it to siblings, as Fish48 suggested, would give a better chance of having an albino fry than randomly breeding it to another fish. You might want to try a Google search for punnet squares to find articles that explain in simple terms how to predict a breeding outcome when you know the parent's genetics. In this case we know that your female is a carrier of the albino gene and your fry is homozygous for that gene. In a theoretical breeding of that female to its opposite sex albino fry, half the next generation would be albinos. The best situation to be certain of getting albino fry is to breed both a male and a female that are already albinos. It would take a rare chance mutation for them to have anything but albino fry.

Many thanks for all of your replies!. I definitely intend to keep the little albino and will try breeding him/her as you suggested. I`ll let you know how things go and I`ll update with pics as we go along! x

are albino mollies, guppies, and swordtails also rare?

Albino fish of any species are rather rare. In some cases, enough have been bred in captivity to establish a large population, but the gene itself is still not common. In swordtails, mollies, platies and guppies, the albino has been found and recorded. In many cases, the albino trait has been encouraged by line breeding efforts and the resulting fish have become quite common in the trade. In other cases, the albino has not caught the fancy of a breeder and the albino fish has been described as rare. In either case, if the albino variation appeals to you, why not go ahead and breed for more of them. The worst you can do is to have a few fish that are harder to move along than their brothers and sisters.

I dont think it will stay pure white to be honest, I had 2 or 3 white babies from my last lot of platys and they coloured up eventually.

Just a quick update to let you know that I know believe the little albino to be a molly. He/she is doing really well and looks more and more like a molly as he/she grows! This is a pic I took a couple of days ago,which really shows up the pink eyes well!