new tuxedo platys will they breed??

[emmab2001]

hi all
i have a 7 gallon tank and yesterday i was finally able to introduce the fish to there new home horray!!!
i have 4 neons, 4 guppies(all female), a red fin shark and 2 tuxedo platys and they are all very active although quite small and are eating well and i think look happy!!

after doing some research i now know that the tuxedo platys are male and female what is the chances of them breeding? the male i harrassing the female and following her round all the time i was not planning to breed thats the reason why i got all female guppies!!

should i be worried??

thanks emma xx

 

[Annastasia]

The chances of them breeding, are almost 100% if you have a male and female!

They will keep breeding too, and having a LOT of fry. You can quickly get over-run with babies. Also, it seems like your tank is a little overstocked to begin with. You might want to get a bigger tank, or get rid of some of those fish.

The neons should really have a bigger school too. More like 7-10, but that won't fit in your tank.... Sooo...I really think you need to get a bigger tank, or get rid of some of the fishies. Also, just female Guppies can have fry too, because they can store sperm from one mating with a male for up to 7 pregnancies.

And also, did you add all the fish at the same time? And did you cycle the tank?

Not picking on you, or anything. Just trying to help you out some!

 

[emmab2001]

thanks for the reply! i'd put the tank as a 7 gallon it's infact a 9 UK gallon hex tank my lfs sold me all the fish working on the inch per gallon rule.

yes we cycled the tank and also had the water tested and all was well!

the tank does not look over stocked on the contrary it looks quite empty!!

you've got me worried now and i don't know what to do!

we were advised that we could also get a fighter fish and a cat fish in a few months time now i feel real unhappy as the whole point of getting the tank was for me to get a fighter fish (i've fallen in love with them!)!!

 

[afireinside]

the tank still seems over stocked... so tuxedo patties breed alog? good, cause i might wanna start breeding fish and selling them to like friend and see if my lfs will take some.

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

The tank is very overstocked- red finned sharks need a 20-30gallon minimum and can get quite terotorial, guppys, platys and neons need a 10gal minimum. Your tank is too small for any of your fish let alone their numbers and the shark will get very stunted in that tank.
I suggest if you want to keep all your fish, you need to upgrade to 30gallon unless you want to start getting fish deaths, water quality issues and desease outbreaks all the time.
Your actual stocking though if we don't take into the fact that you already have too many fish, is not that great either.
In mixed gender groups, platys need to have 2-3 females per male minimum.
Neons need a minimum shoal of 6.
And emmab2001 the tank is far from empty- these fish in the wild live in large lakes and rivers, lfs stocking is nothing to go on either as they can overstock their tanks as the fish rarely ever stay longer enough in the tanks to make social pecking order systems but in a permanent fish home like yours this kind of stocking wrecks havoc.

 

[dwarfgourami]

The thing with tanks "looking" empty is that the two places we see fishtanks before we go into fishkeeping ourselves, are photographs in books and fish shops. That's where we get our idea of what a fishtank "should" look like.

Now, the photographs in books are obviously arranged for photogenic reasons. No photographer is going to take a picture of a school of invisible corys hiding under the ornaments- even though this is totally normal and healthy behaviour for the species in question. I have never read a fishkeeping book which did not stress the dangers of overstocking- and I have hardly ever seen a picture of a tank in one of the said books which was not seriously overstocked.

As for the lfs, as Tokis says, they do not keep the fish for long, so don't need to worry about their social lives, and they mainly keep juveniles which they are hoping to sell before they grow overlarge and/or territorial (which is why you will see some combinations in there that will make the people on this forum scream in agony). Also, shops have limited money to spend on each fish (though on the other hand a certain number of casualties is included in their calculations); also they have MASSIVE filtration systems in a way that you really cannot replicate in a domestic setting.

To some extent we need to retrain our eyes when we go into actually KEEPING fish longterm. An lfs hopes only to have to deal with the same individual for a few weeks, you are looking at making it happy for the rest of its natural life. Try to think of it not as a pretty picture, but as a stretch of an Amazonian river ("peer into the undergrowth, is that a fish? yes, it is, oh look a whole school! look I've spotted them!" )

I tried overstocking when I first went into fishkeeping and though I did not have mass deaths, my fish were not healthy and they were visibly bored. This time round, I've tried hard to be careful and enjoy my fish as individuals rather than as an overall picture, and I'm getting a lot more fun, as they are so much more active (well, it helps if you've got room to turn round).

Good luck with your tank- and do follow the good advice given in previous posts! (if you still think it looks empty how about some plants and other things?)

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

Well said dwarfgourami