Question About A Platty. Is It Male Or Female?

[saurfy]

Hi all,

First off all english is not my native language, so i hope i can make myself understandable without saying something really stupid .

We recently started looking intokeeping tropical fish(the aquarium is been up for almost 2 weeks now without any fish in it yet). Now a friend of us is keeping platies, but her balance is getting way off when it gets to the male/female ratio (to much males in the aquarium). So we are thinking of taking over some of her male platies and a company them with some females we will buy from the local shop.

Now most of the fishes are easily beeing recogised as either beeing male or female when i compare them to pictures we found on the internet.. But there is one we are not sure about.. It does have a much larger analfan (hope this is the right word in english) which would indicate female, but it also looks like to have gonopodium at the bottem of this "3rd" fin at the bottem. So what would this one be?



Im sorry the picture is not more clear, but this little fish is very active so its hard to get it on a picture.

Also our aquarium holds 60liters how much platies would you advise to keep into it? As in how much males should we take over from our friend? And how much females should we add to it? I heard the best ratio would be 1 male against 2 or 3 females, right?

Something to add about it is that we would like to start out with only platties and perhaps add 1 male betta to it when that would be possible and when we think the time is right (we wanna make sure everything goes fine first with just a few platies).

Already thanks for you advice And please feel free to ask any other questions or give any other advice.

[edit] fixed some spelling errors.

 

[JenCliBee]

female

Ratio is 2 females to 1 male but i always prefered 3 females to 1 male.

 

[saurfy]

female

Ratio is 2 females to 1 male but i always prefered 3 females to 1 male.

Ok thanks alot about the quick response could you perhaps explain why this one has the little border at the bottem of the fin that i confused as beeing a gonopodium? (None of the other females have that in her aquarium and as you can see on the picture its really visible). She does pull in the fin alot when she is swimming, but when she is "resting" it seems to be out like in the picture most of the time.. We didnt notice this behaviour on any of the other platies in my friends aquarium either.. I did read about "gender-swapping" where a platy that really looked like a female became a male in the end.. This couldnt be a case like that? The fish is only 2cm in body length at this time.. And also perhaps nice to know is that its pretty aggresive towards all the other fishes (especially females) by rushing behind them and then like trying to chew on them..

Im just trying to get to understand these fishes as much as possible, since we are really newbs when it comes to holding fishes so we are trying to learn as much as possible about them (reading about it nonstop since we aquired the aquarium) and our friend doesnt know that much about it either (these where her first fishes too)..

But since the situation in our friends tank (some of the males tend to becoming alittle bit aggresive against other males) we do want to make our decision as fast as possible, but just not over rushed. Also could it help if we took this little busy bee too? (In the hope she settles down and beeing less aggresive? Or could we better just keep it just take over some males and add only female that we would buy in a shop?

[edit] Added some more information/questions.

 

[OldMan47]

Welcome to the forum.

You are correct Saurfy. That does look like a late developing male to me. If that fish is quite young, it is very possible that it is a male that is just starting to develop its gonopodium. In another month, you will either see it looking like a male or you will find that it is only a color difference. My first guess would be that it is a male.

 

[saurfy]

Welcome to the forum.

You are correct Saurfy. That does look like a late developing male to me. If that fish is quite young, it is very possible that it is a male that is just starting to develop its gonopodium. In another month, you will either see it looking like a male or you will find that it is only a color difference. My first guess would be that it is a male.

Ok thanks, ill guess ill just take over the fish and see how it goes with him/her when it has more space to live in (as in less crowded with other fish) and with a better balance between males and females. Although I dont know much about these fishes yet my best bet is that he was just smart pretending to be a female in a tank with to many males and now its big enough it will fully develop in a male (and at the same time its pay back time to all the bully's ).

Ill keep you guys update about it , also can platties go well with 1 male betta in a 60 liter aquarium? And how much platties would you put into it?

 

[Storm20]

Looks like a female to me.

 

[JenCliBee]

oh rite yeh sorry, i didnt relise the fish was a small young one.... could turn out to be male but i would still say female personally

 

[saurfy]

oh rite yeh sorry, i didnt relise the fish was a small young one.... could turn out to be male but i would still say female personally

Hihi I'm glad its not only me that is/was doubing about it either beeing male or female . How does it sound if we take over 3 males, the little fish in the picture above (so thats 4) and then add like 8 females over an amount of time so we end up with 12 fishes in a 60 liter tank? Or is this way to crowded? Please advice I would love to help out our friend by taking over as many males as possible, but ofcourse I dont want to start with a problem in my own tank .

 

[Storm20]

It look like a female to me and a nice one at that.

 

[OldMan47]

12 platies in 60 litres is quite full. You will not be able to add any other fish or save any fry in a tank that size with that many fish in it.

 

[saurfy]

12 platies in 60 litres is quite full. You will not be able to add any other fish or save any fry in a tank that size with that many fish in it.

How many would you advice then? Would 2 or 3 males and 6 females still be to many? Or would that be a good amount? The only thing we would like to add in the future is perhaps something that lives on the ground and in the far future if everything goes well perhaps a betta male if that would be possible.

 

[OldMan47]

With a total of 8 platties, there would still be a little room for a betta and some small corydoras.

 

[saurfy]

Ok lastnight my gf went and picked up 2 males from our friend and at the same time I went to the shop to buy 4 females to get our aquarium started (we will add more females slowly over time, but we where adviced not to start with more then 6).. We did check the water quality (our friend did and so did the shop) and the water was good.

Now this afternoon I noticed one of the females has alittle injury at her backfin?

Im sorry the picture isnt better of quality but it was hard to get in on picture at all and I wanted to get a picture posted asap. Im 100% sure it was not that way last night when we went to bed, so what is going on? Has she been fighting or could it be something else? Another thing we noticed is that this female is really on her own (the other fish seem to be interacting alot more with each other, while this one really seems to avoid them or atleast ignore them).. The males do not show any intrests in her (they do alot in the other females), which makes it alittle bit weird that she has been nipped on overnight? She does eat well and swims normal as far as we can tell..

Also this evening one of the females has been dropping babyfish (guess she was waiting for more space, because the aquariums at the petshop where so overcrowded).. My gf was like OMG come here we got baby fish, so I runned down and snap it got eaten in front of my eyes (the baby tried to escape but was not fast enough).. [update] We saw a couple of more babyfish hiding around the roots of some plants, sadly enough the other fish seem to have noticed it too now, since they are really actively searching for the fry..

I dont think the fry are from the female that is beeing injured though since she was pretty thin compared the other females we got.. Then again non of the females seems to look any different then they did last night when it comes to size.. So we got no clue who the mother is... This also comes to the question, how long does it take between the first and last baby? Will it take minutes? houres?

Another thing we noticed is that the micky mouse print on one of the fishes became more visible (darker in color).. Is this normal or even possible? Or are we just getting crasy? We only got 2 grey mickey mouse from which one is grey and the other is almost black.. So its not really something to mix up easily and the almost black one is still almost black .

So in 24 hours of real life time and this beeing our first aquarium alot has been happing and I just hope nothing is wrong and advice is welcome, so please let us know if we can do anything .

 

[saurfy]

double post (by mistake). Please remove.