Pregnant platy?

Hi,
I was looking for some advice. I have 3 platys, all of which I thought were female. Lately I've noticed my silver and red one is looking rather large and the smaller orange one seems to follow her around a lot. It's not chasing, just kind of floating along next to her.
I've attached some pics to see whether anyone thinks she looks pregnant or just big and whether my orange may actually be a male.
Tia for any help.

Yes you're right, the orange one is male and the other one is pregnant.

Stacey1990 said:

Hi,
I was looking for some advice. I have 3 platys, all of which I thought were female. Lately I've noticed my silver and red one is looking rather large and the smaller orange one seems to follow her around a lot. It's not chasing, just kind of floating along next to her.
I've attached some pics to see whether anyone thinks she looks pregnant or just big and whether my orange may actually be a male.
Tia for any help.

Click to expand...

Yep, definitely pregnant and the orange one is definitely a male. You can tell based on its gonopodium. The females have a fin that you can see open up and such, but the gonopodium stays the same shape. How long have you had the platies? It's worth noting that platies can hold sperm for up to 6 months, so most platies you buy from your LFS are already pregnant or have the capacity to become pregnant up to 6 months after you take them home.

Oh dear, I've had them about 3 or 4 month.
So is there anything I can do? What's the chances of any babies surviving?

Stacey1990 said:

Oh dear, I've had them about 3 or 4 month.
So is there anything I can do? What's the chances of any babies surviving?

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Put in lots of live plants, like salvinia or water sprite. You can even put in java moss and float it. After you notice the fry, you can put them in a spare tank or a breeder box, but you should never put a female in the small breeder box as this stresses her very much and will make her abort her fry or delay her delivery.

Stacey1990 said:

Oh dear, I've had them about 3 or 4 month.
So is there anything I can do? What's the chances of any babies surviving?

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It depends on how your tank is set up. Heavily planted tanks help a lot. Lots of floating plants or mosses. And I've read that marbles as substrate can give them more places to hide, but I'd say more plants is the best option. Know that it can take a bit more maintenance to raise fry- you need to crumble the fish flakes more so it fits in their mouth and do half water changes every one to two days because of the drastically increased bio-load. You can use a turkey baster or something to suck them up as you see them and place the fry in a breeder box, too- that way the other fish have no way of eating them. It also isn't necessarily inhumane to just leave the fry and see which ones end up surviving and which ones get eaten, since that's what would happen in the wild.
Livebearers are little breeding machines- they can give birth to up to 48 fry at a time and, like I said, can store sperm. Females can also change gender to male if they haven't been impregnated or haven't given birth before and there aren't any males in the tank. In the future, if you absolutely don't want any fry the best thing to do is to get all males. Otherwise, the best ratio is three or more females per male so the male's attention is divided and they don't get stressed.

When I bought the fish I asked for all females so I didn't think this would happen.
I currently have some floating water lettuce and a couple of planted horwart.
I may look into buying a breeder box or just let nature take its course and see if any survive.
How will I know when she is ready to give birth?

Stacey1990 said:

When I bought the fish I asked for all females so I didn't think this would happen.
I currently have some floating water lettuce and a couple of planted horwart.
I may look into buying a breeder box or just let nature take its course and see if any survive.
How will I know when she is ready to give birth?

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That's a good question. I know sometimes you can see the "eyes of the fry" in the gravid spot, but other than that I'm not sure. They usually give birth every 30 days or so though. I have 3 platies that are currently pregnant, so I would be curious to know as well.

Stacey1990 said:

When I bought the fish I asked for all females so I didn't think this would happen.
I currently have some floating water lettuce and a couple of planted horwart.
I may look into buying a breeder box or just let nature take its course and see if any survive.
How will I know when she is ready to give birth?

Click to expand...

@Ianvaldius has already said that it is inhumane to leave and see which fry will survive or gets eaten. I agree with him, I have some floating plants with a guppy male fry who killed other guppy fry and swordtail fry hiding in.

He actually said it wasnt necessarily inhumane so you might want to read again?

I wouldn't risk a breeding box, it can stress the female so much she could die and/or abort her fry

Ianvaldius said:

Yep, definitely pregnant and the orange one is definitely a male. You can tell based on its gonopodium. The females have a fin that you can see open up and such, but the gonopodium stays the same shape. How long have you had the platies? It's worth noting that platies can hold sperm for up to 6 months, so most platies you buy from your LFS are already pregnant or have the capacity to become pregnant up to 6 months after you take them home.

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Most livebearers including platies can actually hold sperm for over a year

Sorry, can I also ask, how are people so sure shes pregnant. Obviously I know shes rather large but apart from that, how are people so sure?

Stacey1990 said:

Sorry, can I also ask, how are people so sure shes pregnant. Obviously I know shes rather large but apart from that, how are people so sure?

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They usually have a gravid spot. In addition to this fat ones wont get a boxy squared off look. Also, with the length of time they can store sperm and how often they give birth it is pretty much guaranteed she is

She looks exactly like my swordtail that is pregnant also. Big wide belly, dark gravid spot, square boxy shape and in the picture you can see her anal area starting to protrude with is getting really to bear the young.