Day 1 - Adulthood

Hello everyone!!!! im new to fishkeeping and about a week ago i realised one of my platys was pregnant!! so now i have a little less than-a-day old little platy. he currently staying in a little clear bucket to stop him being eaten till i can get the breeding net set up and put him in there. here is his story (any advice is welcome)(in a post every day):
Day 1: as mentioned above, i already knew one of my platys (Silver) was pregnant. all my platys are female so she must have been .... before she left the pet shop. so this morning i noticed that Silver was a lot thinner than recently and there, on the net i put over the filter was my little fry, Happy. to stop him getting eaten i put him into his bucket. ive put a trap into the tank to see if i can catch any of his brothers of sisters. the breeding net is over the filter.
here is a youtube video of how to make one:http/www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVwX_kE6dCA
Happy is about 2mm long and has huge black eyes, ill see if i can put a picture of him on tommorrow. im going to feed him liquifry. hes so cute!!!!!!!!!!!!! ill try to write tomorrow

wow there will be a lot of posts! i want to suggest feeding him fine flakes or First Bites. i personally haven't used liquid food but i have always used finely chopped flakes and my fish are amazing!!

what kind of platy is it? i have gold twin-bar platies!

Welcome to livebearers FishLover4+1.
Many of us got hooked on livebearers by having a fry drop in our tanks. As you have indicated, it is a thrill to find them. If you have Liquifry, that is just fine. If not, just powder a bit of adult food between your finger tips and feed it 2 or 3 times per day. A single flake of food, powdered, will be plenty for one feeding. Pictures here are easy, and we love to see them. You take a picture and upload it to a place like photobucket, which is free. Then you copy the IMG link that they give you and paste it here as if it were text. The end result looks like a picture posted right here but if you right click the picture you can get some information on where the file is really located and what the person called that file where it is stored. This is a picture that I took of some of my fry with their mother. Although mollies do not exhibit any parental care, they are often not much hazard to their fry either. Picture taken when the fry were 35 days old and mom was getting close to her next drop.

wow i wish my lone creamsicle fry was that bright! mine is like a light peach color!

oops didnt get round to posting yesterday!!!! ive got some pics im gonna upload as soon as i find the wire. no more fry suvived . i moved Happy out of his bucket into a breeding net in the main tank. i also put in a plan(the good thing about pets at home plants is they come in little ceramic pot things so you can just pick them up and move them. the bad thing is my fish like pulling it apart so i keep having to replant it lol ) lil Happy has completely vanished (probs hiding in the plant somewhere), so it might be a while till i get some more pics no idea what kind of platy it is!!!!! the mum looks kinda like she is black and just covered in silver scales shes really pretty

hhhmm maybe a salt and pepper platy? those are black and white.... i dont know i wuld have to see a pic!

comocrayfish5 said:

hhhmm maybe a salt and pepper platy? those are black and white.... i dont know i wuld have to see a pic!

Click to expand...

hmm soon as i find that wire

this is silver, happy's mum!!!! (best pic of fish ive had in a long time)

this is the breeding net happy's in

and this is little happy!!!!!!
Finally got pics!!!!!! Saw happy twice today, this morning and about 10 mins ago!!!!!!he's hiding slightly less so i spose that means he's settled in to his new home.

you have a blue spot platy, that shine blue when the light hits them right. i had a huge prego one but she died before it could have them i was very sad. they are one of my favorite kinds of platy!

Cool!!!!! looks like my lil Happy has found himself a new hiding spot!! shame cos id found all his old ones, he seems to have realised. i think im gonna do a 25% water change every other day to keep the water nice and clean for him. anyone got any thoughts? by the way, do i need to feed him and my adults brine shrimp? cos my adults live purely on fish flakes and my poor tank plants - got some new ones on sunday!!! i think im gonna set up a giant (like 100 litre or so) fish tank just for platys!!! what do you think??? i think i'll just start with a few and then breed my own to put in it!!!! are all spieces of platy coldwater or are some tropical??? do you think i could get some coldwater mickey mouse platys??? (pref blue - they look really cool!!!)!

comocrayfish5 said:

you have a blue spot platy, that shine blue when the light hits them right. i had a huge prego one but she died before it could have them i was very sad. they are one of my favorite kinds of platy!

Click to expand...

poor lil fish.

I've never heard of coldwater platies, but that's just me.

Neptune54 said:

I've never heard of coldwater platies, but that's just me.

Click to expand...

Pets at home sell the variatus platy as coldwater or temperate fish. It's what I had when I first started back into fishkeeping. I had a coldwater tank and could get them, rosy barbs or white cloud minnows as they are all in the coldwater section. This is how I ended up joining the site as I thought I had been mis-sold them!

yeah technically they're temperate!!!!!!!!!

I started off with 3 platy in a tank.
Now I have this many plus some....



they're like rabbits when it comes to breeding.

All of those except the endlers and the red platy are from fry.
I have about 20 surviving fry altogether.
I don't take the mother out of the tank anymore when she is birthing.
I still get around 8 fry surviving every time.

FishLover4+1 said:

i think im gonna do a 25% water change every other day to keep the water nice and clean for him. anyone got any thoughts? by the way, do i need to feed him and my adults brine shrimp? cos my adults live purely on fish flakes and my poor tank plants - got some new ones on sunday!!! i think im gonna set up a giant (like 100 litre or so) fish tank just for platys!!! what do you think??? i think i'll just start with a few and then breed my own to put in it!!!!

Click to expand...

water changes will help. i do a gallon water change out of my 5 gal fry tank and 2-3 gal out of my 20gal fry tank every 2-3 days. and i think a tank of platies would be awsome! i was going to do that when i first got my 20gal, but it was too expensive so i went to bid goldfish and now it is a fry tank! i personally would gat all kinds of platies so there is a lot of color variety or get a few kinds that would lokk good if bred, like white mickey mouse+ blue spot, sun set wag+ mickey mouse, etc about the brine shrimp- i dont know, i have never used them....