Platy Fry

Good afternoon

I am a novice to keeping platy fish. My Platy gave birth to around 18 platy fry before she died. We presume she must have died during birth which occurred during the night whilst we slept. The fry were birthed in a separate tank.
Apart from a couple of deaths I now have 15 platy fry that I am keeping temporarily in a 15l starter tank. Up until yesterday the fry were active and swimming around happily. I have been performing frequent partial water changes. They have been eating fry granulas that I purchased for them.
I thought that the lack of filter in the tank might have been causing issues with water quality etc so I purchased a fry filter operated by an air pump.

ive put this in this morningafter soaking in the aquarium water. I’m not sure what to do now as they still seem lethargic and look really unhappy.
Any help would be appreciated as I’m so new to this. The pregnancy was accidental, but bound to happen given I had a male and female platy.

Ps
I don’t keep them on window ledge but put them there so you could see them better in pics

@emeraldking may be able to help you. Sorry to hear about the mother...

I would leave them alone for now. Give them some time to get adjusted. It may take a couple of days...

Many thanks,

I forgot to mention that they are now 10 days old.
I will leave them for now to see how they get on.

Hello and welcome to the forum. I also have platy fry, I found that my female platy had fry the day after I bought her, I have 13 in a 30 gallon tank with some snails and a ghost shrimp. I feed them fish food that I grind to a powder. They are a little over 2 weeks old.

add in some fast growing plants like hornwort or anacharis, just float it in the fry tank. It'll take up any ammonia the fry produce

Thanks, will give that a try. They literally have not left the bottom of the tank and look like they are trying to burrow in the gravel.
I’ve grown quite attached to them now and want to make sure they survive.

Isabelle1989 said:

Thanks, will give that a try. They literally have not left the bottom of the tank and look like they are trying to burrow in the gravel.
I’ve grown quite attached to them now and want to make sure they survive.

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Try a water change...

A water change would be good and I would add some floating plants like @NCaquatics suggested. Other plants that would help are frog bite, moneywort and salivina. Try a 50% water change.

Update, two more casualties this morning. I’ve since been to the aquatics store and purchased some plants. Since then 4 of the lethargic platys are now swimming around again (yippee) and the others have moved themselves into the plants. A couple are still laying low but I’m hoping over night This might change

Isabelle1989 said:

Update, two more casualties this morning. I’ve since been to the aquatics store and purchased some plants. Since then 4 of the lethargic platys are now swimming around again (yippee) and the others have moved themselves into the plants. A couple are still laying low but I’m hoping over night This might change

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Sorry you lost more Fry do love to hide in plants, so hopefully they'll be less stressed and the rest will make it. Good luck!