Baby fish!!

I am still so new to tropical fish, I’ve literally had mine not even a week but I am obsessed with them! I could watch them all day
But today I found little little guy! I know there’s a good chance he could get eaten but I’m keeping my fingers crossed for him and there’s plenty of plants for him to hide in so never know but it’s the first baby fish I’ve ever seen and omg they are so cute!

Hugheskc said:

I am still so new to tropical fish, I’ve literally had mine not even a week but I am obsessed with them! I could watch them all day
But today I found little little guy! I know there’s a good chance he could get eaten but I’m keeping my fingers crossed for him and there’s plenty of plants for him to hide in so never know but it’s the first baby fish I’ve ever seen and omg they are so cute!

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What is the species?

joeyr188 said:

What is the species?

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I’m not 100% as I have some platies and balloon mollys but I’m leaning towards thinking it’s a baby platy?

Nothing ! There is nothing cooler than baby fish. Nothing !

Back in the fold said:

Nothing ! There is nothing cooler than baby fish. Nothing !

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Amazing aren’t they! I’ve found two in there so far and all day I’ve been back and forth to the tank and get excited every time I’d find one

Hugheskc said:

Amazing aren’t they! I’ve found two in there so far and all day I’ve been back and forth to the tank and get excited every time I’d find one

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It never gets old. I’ve seen baby fish of lots of different fish and they are all so cool. The coolest thing is finding them by surprise when you aren’t expecting them.

Back in the fold said:

It never gets old. I’ve seen baby fish of lots of different fish and they are all so cool. The coolest thing is finding them by surprise when you aren’t expecting them.

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Yes this was me today feeling the need to message half of my family and friends the good news! Who aren’t fish enthusiast like myself but had to share my joy!
I’ve done a little research today and it says they will give birth to one fry at a time and can be 20-40… as I have never seen one before I’m not sure how old this one could be (and there was one more in there) but could that mean the rest were possibly unlucky or could these be young enough that mother is still in birthing process?

I have been at this for 23 years. I had swordtails in my first tank and the day I saw the first pair of tiny eyes staring up through the floating plants I learned to do the happy fish dance. Since then I have had over 1,000 fish born in my tanks and I still do that dance every time I spot eggs in a pleco cave or new fry in a tank.

May you be dancing for many years......

awesome! i was so elated when the first baby fish popped up in my tank! she survived for such a long time!

TwoTankAmin said:

I have been at this for 23 years. I had swordtails in my first tank and the day I saw the first pair of tiny eyes staring up through the floating plants I learned to do the happy fish dance. Since then I have had over 1,000 fish born in my tanks and I still do that dance every time I spot eggs in a pleco cave or new fry in a tank.

May you be dancing for many years......

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I’ve found so many more today and I’m so excited but now the realisation has set in on where I’m gonna keep them all once/or if they reach adult size

Sgooosh said:

awesome! i was so elated when the first baby fish popped up in my tank! she survived for such a long time!

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I hope I at least get one or two reach adult size it’ll be so rewarding!

I would purchase some!

It never gets boring to see fry of whatever fish... I've seen tons of them but I get excited every single time when fry are born...

Hugheskc said:

Yes this was me today feeling the need to message half of my family and friends the good news! Who aren’t fish enthusiast like myself but had to share my joy!
I’ve done a little research today and it says they will give birth to one fry at a time and can be 20-40… as I have never seen one before I’m not sure how old this one could be (and there was one more in there) but could that mean the rest were possibly unlucky or could these be young enough that mother is still in birthing process?

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Congrats on your first fry!! You've every right to be excited and enjoy them, we know the feeling, even if non-hobbyists don't get it! I bore friends at times with fish talk too.

When you buy these fish from the store, they're juveniles, just reaching sexual maturity. They can start breeding while still quite young though, as you've found! lol. Livebearers like guppies/mollies/platies often arrive in your tank already gravid and surprise you with a batch of fry!

Often with the first one or two batches, a young female will have a smaller batch, even sometimes only a couple - 6-7 or so, I've had, then she'll begin having larger batches as she grows larger, and you get more like 20-40. So if you have a smaller number it doesn't necessarily mean others were eaten! It's more likely since you just got her that she's young and it's her first batch, so totally normal if it's smaller than the average.

In my time breeding guppies/mollies/platies, the largest batch I had to deal with was 37 I think (I didn't always get a headcount since I colony bred, so may have had larger batches at times) but 20 odd was more usual, and not always every month.


You do need to think about where you'll put them... how many adult females do you have? It can get a bit of control once you have a lot of females churning out fry and making sure you don't get overstocked. Worth calling around your local fish stores and seeing if any of them would be willing to take the fry once they're large enough to go on sale.

You are about to get educated in livebearer math. They spawn and they spawn and they spawn. Females of many species can store the male's sperm. They can then have multiple births from a single encounter. And in many species, they soon get big enough to start spawning themselves. Think a matter of months for some species. Unless you have something eating the fry, you will soon be overrun. I had to get my second tank set up to grow out swordtails. I finally got angels to eat the fry. And then the angels spawned which made livebearer output look slow. I eventually stopped keepiny sowrdtails and angels except for Altums. You can almost count on your fingers the number of people in the world who can tank breed them.

Live and learn, and I did.

Consider what happens if one female gives birth to just 20 babies and does so every month. Let us also suppose you are a good keeper and they all live. But many stores will not take these fish, even in trade for store credit. If they do, they might want 15 or 20 fish. But they will not take them as fry, you need to grow them some. So for a month or two your grow them. In that time you get another 20 to 40 kids. If you are unable to move out all of the first spawn, lets say only 5 remain. They are ready to spawn. Lets also assume that of the 5 only 2 are females, So now you get 20 from the original fish and another 40 from the 2 females that did not go out. So here you are in about 4 months with 60 fish to move out. And if you cannot not, more will be spawning.

In the wild this is a great strategy to insure the continuation of the species. Most of the young will end up as food for other fish and the live bearer math makes sense. In a tank things change. If there is nothing there to eat the babies.........