Platy gave birth

[LesGerber]

Good morning all,
I have a bit of a situation here. One of my tuxedo platys decided she wanted to give birth. Now that alone isnt all that odd but up until this point non of my fish ever got pregnant. So I do not have a maternity tank and the babies (3 I can count) have made their way under my greek ruin center piece in the tank. Now normally I would say that its cool and the babies can stay their, but now I notice my other platys and even my swordfish have taken to working their way under these ruins. It is possible that there was more fry and these others are getting in there and munching on them.
Here is my question.....would I be better off to leave them and try to keep the adults out of there or try to take them out out the tank and move them to a small beta type tank. Going that way my only concern is that with all the fish hanging out around the ruins once I lift them off the hiding place they are sure to get gobbled up.
In the next few days I am going to be getting the stuff I need to set up a maternity tank, and that will be covered in grasses and such to offer safe haven for the fry.
But thats not going to do me any good right now as I am trying to figure out what would be the best course of action
Any help would be greatly appreciated

TIA

Les

 

[bigfish]

Separete them as soon as possible, otherwise they will be lunch for your other tank mates, to the betta box or bowl. Easier to keep an eye on them and easier to make sure that they get fed well enough and congrats to you on your sucess.

Are you sure there is no more? likely hiding places to be near the gravel or in the gravel, keep looking.

I warn you they are fast little buggers!!!!to catch

Good Luck

 

[smash12871]

They might not all be hiding under your tank ordamates though. We've actually seen the platy fry in the gravel of our tank. I am not saying to remove your gravel, but that you might only get a percentage of the fry. If you get alot out from under that ordamate, you might be lucky. We the same issue and got what we could the first time and then once a day checked under the rocks we put in after that point . Almost everyday we found one or more hiding. Maybe this info can held you in some way, it seemed to work in our case.

 

[LesGerber]

Thanks all for the replies, we are in the process of setting up a baby tank. We have been searching for babies but we havent been able to find any....I hope they werent a snack



Les