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Information On Platys2007-11-24 23:37:10

Breeding tips:

Most people's first fish to breed are livebearers simply because it's almost impossible to not get them to breed. There is no special skill or requirements needed to breed the livebearers, just have a male and some females and nature will do the rest. Mollies, guppies and platies, do not lay eggs like most fish but instead give birth to young free swimming fry. Most female livebearers that are pregnant should give birth to babies within 3 or 4 weeks. Because the babies are born live and quite large, many will survive and grow right in a community tank. It is obvious to tell which female guppies are pregnant as they will have an obvious black "gravid" spot which is the fry's eyes forming inside the mother, this will form just in front of her anal fin. For platies and mollies the only way to tell how far into the pregnancy the fish is, is by seeing how fat they are, platies and mollies which are about to spawn will seem almost square from the back view and will be very swollen in the middle.

When your female livebearer is big and looks like she鈥檚 about to (burst) release babies there is the option to move her into another aquarium or put her into a net breeder protect her babies when they spawn, it should be noted that the mother for approximately 12 hours after releasing the babies has a surge of a hormone which results in her not being hungry. While this is an option the difficulty is that often I have found that if I move the female too early she will abort the pregnancy due to stress, the same may happen if you buy a heavily pregnant fish from the fish store and yet you find no babies in your tank. For this reason I have found - perhaps because fry especially from livebears are no longer unusual or special I just leave the adults in my community tank which has a planted corner. I have found that even without removing the babies into an external aquarium/net breeder you'll get some babies which make it to adult hood. unless you've got some really evil fish in there! I have also found the use of large marbles on the floor of the tank to be superb as hiding places for the fry, even so if I wish to save some interesting colour fry or need more fry then I follow the following procedure.