venzi

Ic. So how long does it take to get to juvenile? 6 months?

So I had some platy fry a few months ago and they're all growing up fine, but I just happen to notice that I think all of them are female. I have 14 platy fry and I think all 14 of them are female b/c I notice the triangle/fan shaped anal fins on all them. This seems unlikely that all the surviving fry are female and I was wondering if eventually the shape of the anal fin changes as they continue to grow?

oh shoe shelf. that's a good idea too. thanks.

Quick update: So it's been about a month of owning these otos and no deaths. I've seen the otos nibble at cucumbers now. I leave them for like 3-4 days and suction it out w/ a turkey baster. Interestingly enough, my female bettas are eating the cucumber as well. I've been sprinkling the nano fish food every few days and leaving a wafer in the area they hang out, but I have yet to see them go after the wafer (typically the baby platies and bettas devour it before the otos get to it). There's still a ton of algae in my tank so I'm guessing there's still plenty of other stuff to graze on. Fingers crossed. 🙂

Hi. I have a TitanEze fish stand and was wondering if there's suggestions on how to utilize the bottom space of the stand. I could put like container boxes there but it'd just look cluttered. Maybe I could hang some fabric (like curtains) held on by some strong magnets to hide the container boxes? I'm open to any suggestions. Photos of your setup would be appreciated if you've been able to utilize that space below.

What would be some examples of powered foods to sprinkle into the tank? I heard of pure spirulina powder.

Thank you all for the feedback. Love this community. Cool. Good to know you have had this experience. I'm a little hesitant in using gel foods as a staple due to potential issues w/ clouding the water, but yeah, soilent green will be on my list to try. I guess I'd only feed them soilent green like once or twice a week so it wouldn't be that bad? My otos so far have not been too shy fortunately. I have 5 total and typically a group of 2-3 of them are on my front glass or side glass moving about. I have yet to see all 5 moving together, but I'm sure I"ll catch a glimpse of this as the weeks progress. These fish are total clowns (in the best way possible) and I love their movement patterns. yea that's a great insight.

Hi. I was curious on people's experiences in getting otocinclus to eat prepared foods (veggies, pellets, gels, wafers/pies etc). I got a few otos recently and they don't seem interested in blanched zucchinnis, veggies wafers, pellets or gel food made from pellets (albeit medicated food). I gave them a few days in a breeder box to see if they'd eat any of that stuff and the closest I was able to witness was a few otos sitting ontop of the zucchini (I never observed them eating it but maybe they did while I wasn't looking). So I just gave up and let them loose in my tank which has tons of algae and biofilm everywhere b/c I didn't want to potentially starve them too long. They took for the algae and still have plump bellies so they seem fine at the moment. I heard that sometimes I need to leave the veggie in there for a few days b/c otos like a certain texture (the longest I left a piece of zucchini was like 2 days - other days I just swapped them out in 1 day). Anyways, just curious if anyone has tips on getting them to eat something other than the stuff they graze on the surfaces.

wow. yea that totally makes sense. love how simple the concept is.

So when bubbles pop, they spray bits of water. Anyone have tricks/hacks/DIY mods to contain the bubbles or the splash that bubbles from air stones create so that it doesn't get all over the lid or even outside the tank? I'm thinking there has to be a way to do something w/ like PVC pipes or something. The bubble pop spray is one of the reasons I use a pump to create choppy waters instead of air stones in my main tank, but I do want try to use air stones if I can get around this problem.

Yea I think my problem was that initial female platy I had just wasn't healthy at all to give birth. These latest female platies I added a few months ago seem to be healthy and giving birth no problem. As a quick update. I released the half inch fry into the community tank last night without issues so far. I was pretty convinced that if these other smaller fry were doing just fine then it would be fine as well. Seems like the bigger fish think it's food until it gets closer and realizes it's a bit too big and then just stops. So that's good. It's pretty cool to see these small fry scavenging around the gravel. Definitely brings more life to my tank. Thanks for all your feedback.

So regarding that rule of thumb of "fitting inside the mouth", would a bigger fish try to "chew" or bite off like half the fish? Or would they pretty much want to swallow them whole? So like the head of the fry is the widest part, but the tail is skinnier. So if a bigger fish were chasing the fry around, they could theoretically easily stick up to half of the fish up to the head perhaps, but then realize "oh the heads too big for me to swallow". Would they at this point just release the fish or try to bite off half the fish? My intuition is that they'd spit the fish out (with perhaps some damage to the fry) b/c that's the typical behavior I see when fish try to swallow a food pellet too big. I was also thinking some of these fry now have that orangish color kicking in (since they're red wag tail platies). So if that coloration is a sign of maturity, then at that point, would the adult platies realize they're the same species and not want to eat their own kind?

@nic yea i hear you. I've been meaning to setup another 5g or 10g quarantine/isolation tank, but still haven't gotten around to it yet. Owning a betta sorority has been extra work in terms of isolating certain bettas at times. And their dominance heirarchy seems to change over time as well as certain fish at the top may get unhealthy and such. It's a dynamic structure for sure and I'm at the point now that I don't think I want to maintain a sorority going forward. I'll prob just keep the ones I have and not actively try to expand them. I want to try raising some other fish. I'm currently considering adding some neon tetras when I can and maybe a few otos. I think the advantage of picking a betta from a sorority tank is that you can pick the strongest/healthiest of the bunch whereas w/ cups it's harder to tell. But I think if you plan on keeping just the 1 fish, then it doesn't really need to be that strong anyways, since it wont be stressed from other bettas chasing it around. Anyways good luck to you. If you do decide to get multiple female bettas and you need to separate them, I've had luck w/ keeping them in jars temporarily with a daily water change. I guess the challenge w/ going into winter season is the cooler temps tho.

20g and yes planted. I have a few fake plants in there as well that give pretty good hiding spots.

So after a year of struggling, my platies finally gave birth about 2 months ago. I've managed to save a a dozen (surprisingly over the course of several weeks) and they're doing well in a breeder box so far. I know that I should be giving them a bigger tank to really grow, but I don't really care to grow them that fast nor that big. I'd actually prefer to breed smaller sized platies if I could. Anwyays, so the biggest fry is about 0.5 inch. I'm pretty confident it wont fit inside any of the other fish in my community tank (they're just platies and female bettas), but can anyone give some advice if its still too early to release the 0.5inch fry into community tank? For some reference, the 0.5 inch fry still can't swallow 0.5mm pellets. Also, I noticed today at least 4 other smaller fry (less than 0.5inch) surviving in the community tank somehow. I'm pretty amazed there's still survivors after all this time.