platty babies

I have 2 platys in my 20 gallon tank woke up this morning have 3 babies swimming around,should i take them out or should just leave them in their the male and female seems not to hurt them,and how often do platties have babies

 

garfield lover74

platties and all live bearing fish species do have cannabilistic tendencies
they probably had more than 3 babies - 1st broods are typically smaller as the fish is still imature, but even so double figure broods are common - with broods of more than 30 as the fish mature

if your serious about raising platties - removing the female into a smaller tank once the belly is swollen and the area near the vent has the tell tale gravid spot (dark triangle) easy to see on lighter coloured fish but I appreciate on darker fish, then only the swollen belly will be a easy to see indicator

if you can seperate pregnant females and place them in small tanks with lots of plant cover - most of the fry will escape to safety , once you see some fry, then remove the female and leave the developing platties in the smaller tank

another option although not as kind , but effective if you have limited space - is to use the live bearer breeding boxes , these float in your main tank, you place the gravid female in there, the unit has a false base with slots in, the babies swim through these slots and end up in the area below

birthing often takes place early hours of the morning , so if you see fry in the base section of the trap at 9 am for example, the female has probably released them all

leave the female for an hour or 2 to recover, return to main tank, and then lift out false slotted base so fry can then have the full trap to themselves

the traps are fine IMO and I have raised many livebearers using them
they keep the babies safe and also facilitate easy feeding as the fry are confined you can target the foods

for baby platties you can feed these powder foods 24 hours after they are free swimming
I never purchased any fry foods , I just ran my finger around the inside of a normal tin of flake foods and you gather enough flake dust, which is a good food for about 2 weeks
until they can take larger particles , like freeze dried boodworm, which is easy to crush into small pieces

hope that helps

Steve

 

thank you so much really appreciate the advice