New arrivals!

Fry are eight days old now
Still so small, although I'm feeding them several times a day so they should put on some size soon. 37 in the grow out tank, number 38 is still in the parent tank, have given up on catching that one at the moment

11 days old! Sadly I don't think all will make it, spotted one grey fry today that was staying near the bottom, and swimming as strongly as the others, and looks a bit skinny and smaller. So not all may make it, we will see... it's made it for 11 days, so you never know. They're getting plenty of food, you can see clouds of the stuff in the water in these photos, still feeding some first bites along with daphnia and finely ground bug bites, some of which are still too big for the fry, but the cories enjoy cleaning up!

Sorry to only take photos when there is food floating in the tank, but have to take them then since the fry hide away in the plants except at feeding time.

Cories are also looking fantastic again, their problems cleared up beautifully, and I love them so much. Thank you @NCaquatics

Bonus new platy and molly fry in the 57 gallon, they like to hide in the java moss attached to a stone here. Mostly platy here, although there are some slightly larger black molly fry elsewhere, maybe a month or so old. There are some here that are a week or so old, a few that are coming up on a month old. @AilyNC


One of the newer platy mixes emerging, seems to be a mix of the blue platies, giving those speckles that I think will be blue as it matures, and an orange background from an orange parent (see later pics). Blue platy mum, since we only have female blue platy adults, and an orange dad.

One of the blue platy mums, the other has more dark speckles. Also a young jet black male molly that I might keep, he's a beauty.

Pale fry is likely a santa platy fry, takes a few weeks for their colours to develop.



Some of the black molly youngsters are really nice, shame we can't keep them all. Keeping the jet black male since we lost the large old male from the original trio recently (he was more than five years old) so will keep this one, then later select a couple of females from the much younger molly fry rather than keep an of the older females, unless a particularly pretty one catches my eye.

Also another young orange platy, mix of a santa mickey mouse platy mother and a red mickey mouse dad.

Gold dust molly might be gravid, we'll see


One of the two big momma mollies, one of the original trio that are more than five years old, and still going strong popping out fry. Love the silver and blues on these girls. They're huge, big mollies, and show why they don't belong in smaller tanks. As they get older, they really get big.


Just for size comparison, that's an adult male guppy in front of her, she's a big girl. The others are youngsters and not full size yet.

So lovely. You've a great mix in sizes. I got weirded out that all my 2 months old look female. Read up on it & they can take up to 5 months to sex. I've 12 in total & feel like my small tank is over run with them. Can't imagine 30+ tank full hope they keep doing well.

And the blue platy youngsters that I was growing out in my guppy/shrimp tank. Think the delay in sexing them because I was busy trying to get water parameters back in check might have resulted in the girls getting knocked up... ooops! There is definitely at least one male.

This one is Bandit, she's the only one with dark speckles over her eyes, so keeping her. Will keep her and another girl in here for a while longer, a young male in the 57 gallon since we don't have a blue male, and the rest will go to LFS.


Whoops... I didn't clean the outside glass before taking these. Oh the shame!


Really need to trim the l.sessiliflora again too... grows so fast! The shrimp love it though. It looks like it's sprouting shrimp.


The one remaining guppy fry that I couldn't catch is still in here, see him hiding down the back here among the cyprus thing, and darts into the sessiliflora, so impossible to catch without uprooting everything, so here he stays for now. You can't get net down there right at the back among all these plants, smart little cookie.

AilyNC said:

So lovely. You've a great mix in sizes. I got weirded out that all my 2 months old look female. Read up on it & they can take up to 5 months to sex. I've 12 in total & feel like my small tank is over run with them. Can't imagine 30+ tank full hope they keep doing well.

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Five months!
For platies? I don't think it takes quite that long, don't panic. They do seem to take longer for the males to develop the gonopodium, compared to guppy fry that you can start sexing at a month old, it takes me longer with platy fry too, since they all look female to begin with. But these ones aren't five months old yet, they're approaching three months I think, and I can definitely spot the male. I should have caught them and sexed them earlier, but with the daily water changes and nitrite spikes, I had my hands full already and put it off.

They're all so beautiful. Great job the plants look great too!

AdoraBelle Dearheart said:

Five months!
For platies? I don't think it takes quite that long, don't panic. They do seem to take longer for the males to develop the gonopodium, compared to guppy fry that you can start sexing at a month old, it takes me longer with platy fry too, since they all look female to begin with. But these ones aren't five months old yet, they're approaching three months I think, and I can definitely spot the male. I should have caught them and sexed them earlier, but with the daily water changes and nitrite spikes, I had my hands full already and put it off.

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I see now my source was random forum as first result in google search. It says up to 3 months for gonopodium to appear. Very clear by 5 months. My biggest are still all looking female & they're probably about 8 weeks old. Honestly can't tell time since the first lockdown

AilyNC said:

They're all so beautiful. Great job the plants look great too!

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Thank you love! So do yours in your new tank! Are the cherry barbs eating now?

AdoraBelle Dearheart said:

Thank you love! So do yours in your new tank! Are the cherry barbs eating now?

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I'm not sure. I think the pellets sink too quickly. But I do see them going around the bottom looking for food. Maybe I need a different food type. I've been using NT Labs Pro-F Probiotic Tropical pellets. They aren't shy at all. No skittishness. Active too which is nice

AilyNC said:

I'm not sure. I think the pellets sink too quickly. But I do see them going around the bottom looking for food. Maybe I need a different food type. I've been using NT Labs Pro-F Probiotic Tropical pellets. They aren't shy at all. No skittishness. Active too which is nice

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It doesn't hurt to have 2-3 varieties to feed, the variety is good, as long as you don't have more food than you can reasonable get through before it goes off. You can always freeze some portions if that's a potential concern though

Update: The two older yellow guppy fry from Sunshine's first batch I had assumed were both female? Nope, noticed yesterday that one is a boy! He's developing a pretty tail, and definite gonopodium. Will try to get a photo later. So I'd better separate those sharpish.

The plan for today is to catch and sort the blue platy fry. Not quite sure how I'm going to do it yet, wanted to also sort molly and other platy fry to go to LFS, and would have put fish store fish into the grow out tank so they'd be easy to catch up to go to the store (catching them the morning of from the 57 gallon is a nightmare task), but that's full of tiny fry now that would get eaten. But gonna have to sort the platy fry today since I have too many male blue platies in my guppy/shrimp tank and they're getting rambunctious. Plus there are a few platies still in the 57 gallon. So think I'll have to catch all of them from both tanks, sex them all, then whatever I have the least of, males or females, will have to stay in my tank, the larger group in the 57 gallon, and I'll just have a harder time catching them all up and bagging separately/deciding which to keep on the morning I go to the LFS.

Today is fish juggling day!

Kinda wishing I had a spare tank or two now!

AdoraBelle Dearheart said:

Kinda wishing I had a spare tank or two now!

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Think we all have been there at some point or another

AdoraBelle Dearheart said:

rambunctious

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Fantastic word that, rambunctious, meaning to be uncontrollably exuberant or boisterous.

Think that is the word of the day for me!

Ch4rlie said:

Think we all have been there at some point or another



Fantastic word that, rambunctious, meaning to be uncontrollably exuberant or boisterous.

Think that is the word of the day for me!

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I'm genuinely like "we have way too many fish!!" right now! Trying to sort male/female/keepers/LFS ones... eeek!
Livebearer problems!

I need to take some deep breaths, have another coffee, and come up with a plan of action. Just means tanks might be a bit chaotic as temporary homes happen, and I'll have to remind myself that it's only until I can get to the LFS It'll still be less chaotic than now, since they'll be sorted by sex.

Of course, if I moved the new guppy fry back to parent tank, I could use the grow out tank... no! Then I'd have to catch all those newborns again... not worth it! LOL.

Fry are 17 days old now!
Still growing well, hard to photograph since they're still so small and the darker ones don't show up well, have seen a couple of the darker ones already developing some black in their tails.

This is the tan they're in, cories that are in there spawned so the cory eggs are in a net in the breeder box, the guppy fry are all over the tank.


Couple of the fry


The one newborn from this batch that I couldn't catch and left in the parent tank is still in there and looking well, seems to be growing well too.

This is the male from the last batch of fry where only two made it, not the best photo I'm afraid, but the best I can get. He's starting to get a tail like his dad's



And I was supposed to be winding down the guppy breeding, but still can't decide whether to keep this female or not. I haven't named her so I'm not super attached, but she is the last female from the line of originals I started out with, so there's some sentimental side of me that doesn't quite want to let her go yet, since that would be final, you know? I'd still have the yellow sub adult female and any of these new fry if I wanted to keep some of those, but those are different parents I bought later, not that original batch I started with.


Even worse, I got attached to this female platy youngster and named her Bandit, because she has dark speckles over he eyes which none of the others had, so she stuck out


So I want to keep her. And this male stuck out when I sorted through the fry too:

He's got that dark pattern along the middle of his body which sticks out, and we don't have any blue platy males right now.

If I keep them, I'll select another female from the batch that's ready to go to LFS that looks different again, there is one that is very blue that is tempting, so I'd have a trio of blue platies. Aside from these three, have nine young blue platies in another tank ready to go to LFS, but one is a fair bit smaller than the others, so will keep that one a while longer to grow out some more, she's a bit small to handle the store filter.

But If I keep this trio, then I'm right back where I was with the guppy problem, lol. Constant rounds of fry and taking batches to LFS!

Do I really want to do this? On the one hand, there are still plenty of livebearers in my dad's tank, so even if I stop keeping any myself, the rounds of fry and taking batches to the store isn't going to stop anyway. On the other, it would still be easier to manage if only his tank is producing 30-40 fry...

I don't know. I can't decide! Ill be taking a lot to the store on Tuesday either way, but which ones I'll hold back, I don't know!

I enjoy having fry but I also want to do more with my 58L than keep fry lovely photos