Surprise platy fry!

[drawnitsud]

Sooooo, this is kind of a crazy story. As some of you may know, my kids have a 10 gallon aquarium with 6 neon tetras, 2 female platys and 3 mystery snails. A few weeks ago or so, the male platy in the tank died rather suddenly to what we think was wasting disease. He was always smaller and thinner than we thought he should be even though he ate pretty voraciously. Anyway, we ended up dosing the whole tank after he died (very sad event for my kiddos as he was their "first" fish) in the three meds that coop suggests. Everyone seemed to be healthy when, yesterday, we went out of town for the night. We fed everyone a little extra and checked on things. I commented that one of the females looked rather plump but thought nothing of it because its been, at LEAST, two months since the male platy died and I never saw him copulate with either of the two. We got home about an hour ago and suddenly I heard my kids screaming for me and something about the fish. 

Depressed, I trudged up the stair fearing the worst. But when I looked, they had big eyes and were giggling uncontrollably. Of course, they didn't TELL ME what they saw, they just kept trying to point. I couldn't see anything and was a little exasperated but relieved because the fish seemed fine. The two platys were huddled together behind the hornwart when HOLY CRAP, I finally saw what they were pointing at... A PLATY FRY. 

WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?

Anyway, I am unprepared (except I had a ez breeder from coop handy in case this happened) and didn't really look much up about Platy and the fry. I don't have any baby brine fish or any fry food, so for now, I crushed up the flake food into tiny bits and put some in to the breeder until I can go to my LFS tomorrow. Any recommendations on what to get?

So could this be from the male platy a few weeks ago or am I wrong and one of the two platys I have left are female?I am PRETTY sure these two are female though. I'll post pictures later.

Can she be STILL having more fry? I read they usually have anywhere from 8-20 or up to 80!!!

So... any info is helpful. How often to feed them? How much? 🙂 I am pretty stoked to take this next adventure with my kids, but I really hope I get it right, too. Thanks everyone!

[Fish Folk]

So fun! Kids make fish keeping extra-delightful.

You can feed Platy fry very finely crushed fresh flake food. Not too much, but a dusting. A fish’s stomach is only the size of its eyeball.

Platys don’t typically eat their own fry. But to be safe, you can either remove fry (as you have here), or remove adults.

Interestingly, female Platys can reserve male sperm for many months, and continue to drop fry every 4-6 weeks with no male present. Most livebearers  bought at a fish store are already gravid.

Check out this interesting article to corroborate that.

Congratulations!!

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

Oh how cool is that? Look at that little guy. Congratulations!

[drawnitsud]

On 7/17/2022 at 8:00 AM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

Oh how cool is that? Look at that little guy. Congratulations!

Thank you! We ended up finding five fry. And it's fairly heavily planted so we are going to look for more today. 🙂

Does anyone know if some community repashy would work for the fry? Like a tiny amount they could just munch on? I've read that you can even add some of the powder to the water table but I'm not so sure about that and I already have some made...

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

Just based on what I’ve seen on the forums, I believe they will seek food floating in the water column. I don’t know that they’d know to go for anything that sinks. Not sure about adding the Repashy powder. Why not try it out and see if they will? It seems pretty small. Every aquarium is an experiment.

Also some fry will eat hard boiled egg yolk. It’s a great source of protein. But it can foul the water quickly. You can moisten the end of a bamboo skewer and dip it in the hard boiled egg yolk and a tiny amount will stick to it. That’s all you need to feed to start out. Observe them and increase amount when needed.

[Theplatymaster]

i basically raise platy fry as a seperate hobby at this point, i  feed them: 1:Live  BABY BRINE SHRIMP 2, Hikari First Bites 3. i mash up flakes and bloodworms and wafers into one big powder and feed that too

[drawnitsud]

On 7/17/2022 at 10:42 AM, Theplatymaster said:

i basically raise platy fry as a seperate hobby at this point, i  feed them: 1:Live  BABY BRINE SHRIMP 2, Hikari First Bites 3. i mash up flakes and bloodworms and wafers into one big powder and feed that too

Thank you! Do you keep a baby brine shrimp setup? I am exploring the idea, but honestly, I have two tanks and this is the first fry we have had out of either, so idk if my wife would allow me to do so 😄 I may see if my LFS has any, but they aren't very big, so I am not sure. I did order some first bites so they will be here in a few days. I have dried bloodworms from hikari, so maybe I will add them to the flakes I have mashed up.

I think my biggest problems now are how MUCH to feed them for each feeding (going to try to feed them 5 times a day) and what to do with them when they are big enough to remove from the breeder. I have heard two weeks is big enough for them to not get attacked by other fish (the other female platy is trying to eat them through the breeder 😕 ). I have a 10 gallon tank I am not using, so I am going to start the process of setting it up today. But I will be gone for 10 days this coming Thursday, so this will be an experiment for my daughters to get the tank ready!

[drawnitsud]

An update to our surprise fry!

They are doing well in the Ziss Breeder Box. I moved them out into a bucket last night and cleaned up the Box before moving them back in. But here is a picture of them (really hard to get a good shot). They seem to be growing pretty rapidly and my two oldest kiddos have completely taken care of them, feeding them four times a day and removing any waste at the bottom. Three of them are pretty good size while two are lagging behind a little. I wonder if the smaller two are male and the bigger are female, but I haven't tried telling their gender really yet.

Does anyone know what size I can put them back in the main tank? In said tank, we have two full sized female Platy, six Neon Tetras and three Mystery snails. I'm nervous about the two smaller ones, but they are all two months old. I know people say 'when they can no longer fit into the Platys mouth' but I honestly don't know how big that is .