Day 1 - Adulthood

pics of my new tank:


and a balloon molly i saw at my lfs - pregnant???

and now little Happy's tank.
by the way: my v. platys are acting odd: hiding in ornaments and then lieing on the floor, and when i come over they fly up and start flickering around - are they ok???
thanks everyone

love your new tank! if that is a platy in the store then it is probable pregnant, it is hard to tell but it might be a ballon molly- that are naturally fat.
about the acting weird, does it happen when you turn on the lights? my goldies used to hide and were very scared when i turned on the lights. they stopped it after a while. i have also had some platies that used to sit on the bottom in the morning then when they 'woke up' they acted normal. all i can say is test your water and keep the lights off if they are being light sensitive.

i haven't got a test kit
and yes it is when i turn the lights on but i have live plants and i'm planning on adding some snails so i want the plants and algae to stay alive.
also they didn't have a problem in the old tank

well if you keep the lights on they should stop freaking out, if not then i have no clue what happened to them. i recommend getting a Jungle 5-n-1 test kit. they are very accurate and test for 5 things. around here they are 11$ for 25 test strips. its kiind of expensive but i dont use them that often, just when the fish are acting weird.

uk the cheapest is £15 which may not sound like much but i'm on pocket money (literally)

fish, fish, fish
(sorry i'm a bit random sometimes)

FishLover4+1 said:

uk the cheapest is £15 which may not sound like much but i'm on pocket money (literally)

Click to expand...

i understand, i have that problem too sometimes

How big are variatus platys supposed to be at 4 months old?? Happy seems quite small.

i have no clue. though i have fry that are over 4 months i think they are still small. i think that if you dont have a 100+ grow out tank like the commercial fish breeders have, the fish wont grow to the full size

commercial fish breeding tanks:

ugh those breeding tanks look like water cleaning units

how big should Happy be before he's let out into the main tank - i dont think he'll be eaten now but i worry about him not getting food / being bullied.

people say to put them in when they are bigger than the other fishes mouths, but i dont believe that. when i had only molly fry in my 20 gal and i wanted to introduce yellow/ red platy fry that were a tiny bit smaller than the mollies, the mollies would not except them. i saw that it was the color change. when more molly fry was added, they were fine, but the bright red platies were like swimming meals. i think i lost a platy due to the fact, so i waited longer to put them in. and when i did add them i scooped them in the net and put them in the new tank (still in the net) and then i gave the mollies food, so they naturally would go to the top and the new fish could go safely to the bottom in the plants. do you have a pic of how big happy is now? i mean, you could put him in any time if you had many "fluffy" plants (not one with big leaves) for him to hid in. but i would be afraid of bullying still.