Pregnant Or Not!

[tonilee7]

Hi,

Can anyone help me? I have been breeding swords, molly's and guppy's quite sucsessfully now for some time, and sometimes I even get the occasional brood of platty fry. I have 7 female platty's but I can never tell when they are pregnant because I have trouble identifying the gravid spot in them. Every time I think one is pregnant I put it in the breed net but they never seem to have fry but every so often I find little stray fry in the platty tank so obviously I am missing something.

There is one platty that I can tell when she is gonna have babies but that was just luck because I had her in the medicine tank and she had fry so now I just count every 28 days and she either goes 1 day over or 1 day under her date, but how do I know wether the other platty's are pregnant, is there any way other than the gravid spot that will help me identify wether they are pregnant?

Any advise would be much appreciated! thanks toni

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

Apart from the gravid spot, there aern't any sure fire ways to tell if your fish is pregnant although in the last couple of days of the livebearers pregnancy, the female will spend more and more time on her own- she may get harrassed by other platys/swordtails in the tank alot or start becomming short tempered towards them.
You will most likely be more successful in getting platy fry if you ditch the breeding nets and just by some nice dense plants and put them in the tank, platys prefer to give birth in planted areas of the tank where their fry can automatically hide in the plants once born and be out of the hungry eyes of other fish.
Platys, like any other livebearer, do have the ability and tendancy to eat their own or other livebearers fry, a female platy will be far more likely to goble up her own fry if she is left long enough in an open space with her fry- the only thing that stops her eating them while giving birth are temporary hormones that become present in the body, but once they have worn off she will eat fry like any other platy.
If your platy gives birth during the middle of the night, when she is most likely to, and you don't get to her soon enough after she has given birth she will probably start eating the fry which may be why you are experiencing putting pregnant females in breeding nets only to find them later emptied of fry, but no fry to be seen.
Livebearers are also more likely to abort in breeding nets or die from birthing complications...

 

[tonilee7]

Thanks for that info, I have just moved my platties into their own tank in hope that they will give birth in there, I havn't had any problems with platties aborting or dying in nets but I have had a few molly's abort in the nets.

I did have a few baby fry in a seperate baby tank that I was lucky enought to save before they became dinner, but now I have a problem with my tanks and I am loosing alot of my fish especially my babies. But that is a seperate topic all together. thanks toni

 

[Ddraig Goch]

I find that in the last week before giving birth Platys take on a 'pear shaped' appearence when looked at directly from the front.

I agree that some type of birthing tank would be much better that using a breeding net or trap.

Good luck.