Platy population, Self regulating?

Nelly

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We have our 58L tank all set up and are now the proud owners of three female platys (for my 4year old, all named). It seems one of them is pregnant (not entirely unexpected) and with the amount of plant life in the tank I suspect some of the babies will avoid being eaten by the other fish (the plants are doing really well). My question is, will the population self regulate to the appropriate number for the tank or do we need to take other steps to control it? And if we need to take steps, any suggestions on what you would do?
 
Oh boy!

I don't suppose you can swap out the three females for three identical males when your kid isn't looking, can you? ;) Kidding! Well, kinda...

Sorry to break the news, but nope, they won't self regulate at all, and if one female is gravid, there's a solid chance they're all carrying sperm packets from whichever male(s) knocked up the one you can see carrying eggs... ;)
And it doesn't stop with one batch of babies - each female can have several hundred fry, every month, even without a male around...

Female livebearers can store sperm packets and use them to self-fertilise when they're ready, and they can store these packets for even up to a year, so you could have many fry in your future!

Even from the one batch of fry, within a few short months you'll need to separate out the males from the females, because the young males from that batch of fry will quickly mate with every female they can, include the original adult females, so you can imagine how rapidly you go from one (or three) female(s) popping out fry every month, to many females popping out fry... Just to make it harder, all of the fry will look like females for quite a long time. It takes a while for the males gonopodium (anal fin/sexual organ) in males to develop, and by the time it does, they're getting ready to mate).


Now that I've scared you with the worst case scenarios!


Platies don't seem to quite as prolific as guppies fortunately, and it's more common for females to have smaller batches for their first batches of fry, and 20-30 for later batches. It's not super common for them to have hundreds in one go. But it can certainly still get out of hand pretty quickly. It's a lot of fun for a kid to see livebearers breeding, since the fry are born much more developed than an egg-laying fish, and grow rapidly, so it's a great teaching tool. And the baby fish are adorable! But you'll want to be making plans for how to manage it now, before the population explodes beyond your abilities to manage it.

The more plants and hiding spaces there are for fry, and the more well fed the adults are, the more fry are likely to avoid being eaten. But you'll still want the live plants, since they help provide decent water quality, and make all of the fish feel safer and more secure. The more fish in the tank, the more pee and poop in there, and the plants really help manage that. You'll want to monitor the water conditions though, and increasing water changes is best when you have fry, not only because of higher levels of ammonia being produced, but it improves growth with fry.
If numbers of fry are getting out of control, leaving the adults hungry for a few days can help resolve that issue, but only when the fry are a few days old and small enough for an adults mouth... and not many of us have the stomach to use that self-regulating method!

Talk with your local fish stores about whether they'd be willing to take the young once they're large enough. Most large chain stores won't - for fears of bringing disease into their store tanks. But privately owned fish stores are more likely to agree, and it's much easier to bag up the whole batch to take to a LFS than to sell off a few babies at a time via gumtree or similar.

Your size tank and stocking, you should be fine for the first batch or two, while they're young, but a separate nursery tank is a good idea, at least to be able to separate out the males away from the girls, and likely to raise future batches if you find yourself getting over run.

Good luck! Happy to answer any follow up questions you have :)
 
Thank you! I think we're going to need it!

Sorry if it seems like a lot, but my mama always told me; "Hope for the best, prepare for the worst". Forewarned is forearmed, right? :)
 
Only if the tank gets that crowded that the stress joins in too much, a number will die off. That's nature responding to the circumstances. But that's basically the only self-regulating thing that can happen. Otherwise, there's no such thing as self-regulation in numbers when it comes to platies.
 
I had been told that the adults would eat the fry and that as the number of adults increased the number of fry eaten would also increase until a relatively stable population was achieved, which kind of makes sense but then I suppose I hadn't factored in feeding the fish which would alter the sustainable population of the tank from that (but not other) point of view.

We have neither the space nor resources for a nursery tank so I suppose we'll just have to work out another solution. Luckily, it still seems to only be the one who is pregnant so maybe that is slightly easier. I think I'll go back to the shop and talk to them about it.
 
I think they self-regulate. Or the population of a tank will balance itself, In the seventies' I had a friend who only kept live bearers. Her tanks were full of fish young and old, the fish were all healthy, some died for sure, but in general no problems. She just let her fish do their thing. Interestingly, she fed her fish porridge, served on a saucer, no salt. Those live bearers were the best that I have ever seen. Her lyretail swordtails were show quality and her black platies outstanding.
 
I'm sorry to give you an idea she had multiple 3 foot tanks with one to two hundred fish in each.
 
I had been told that the adults would eat the fry and that as the number of adults increased the number of fry eaten would also increase until a relatively stable population was achieved, which kind of makes sense but then I suppose I hadn't factored in feeding the fish which would alter the sustainable population of the tank from that (but not other) point of view.
Well, adult platies eating their young, "can" happen but doesn't have to. It's just a matter of the individual nature wether an adult platy will eat fry or not. So, one can never say that all adult platies will eat fry. But the problem is that you just don't know what the adults will do. If they won't you'll be over populated in period of time. But if they will eat fry, the number of platies will be controlled.
 
If you have concerns, just get rid of the females and have a male only tank
 
If you have concerns, just get rid of the females and have a male only tank
We have three fish. They are all female! That would mean getting all new fish, which is an option but they are all named so might get interesting!
 
Keep the females then and get rid of any male babies that appear.
 

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