babies and vacuum?

[panboy]

i need to vacuum my tank but when i was vacuuming yesterday, i noticed that there baby platy's that would pop up when i vacuumed near the rocks where they were at. should i wait anotehr week so they get a little bit larger? i dont want to vacuum them up. lol, and i dont even knokw how many i have, ive counted 3, but i might have more

 

[freshmike]

Kinda have a predicament there bud!!!

I would definately wait!!! Don't want the poor little guys to get sucked up!!!

 

[lizard]

i need to vacuum my tank but when i was vacuuming yesterday, i noticed that there baby platy's that would pop up when i vacuumed near the rocks where they were at. should i wait anotehr week so they get a little bit larger? i dont want to vacuum them up. lol, and i dont even knokw how many i have, ive counted 3, but i might have more

This is exactly how I dsicovered that I had some baby Platys! I was vacuuming the gravel tonight, and up came a fry! Ended up finding eight of them! Took them all out and put them in a breeder net/tank. I found most of 'em towards the edges of the tank. For all I know, there are more in there!

Pamela
aka Lizard

 

[Moe]

You could also just do a water change without cleaning the gravel. Although you might want to get the babies in a net breeder like lizard suggested.

 

[Cate]

Panboy - I too have tiny baby platies and have had no problem vacuuming the gravel. If you move slowly, the babies are so fast they'll move out of the way. Plus, I use a white bucket to collect the water, so if any babies did get sucked up, they'd be easy to see and put back into the tank. So far, no babies have been vacuumed. Let us know how it goes!