New Tank Questions

Hi Sue and everyone else,
Hope you're well and all your scaly friends too!
I am setting up my new tank and have a couple of questions please.
Firstly, I still have my platys.....quite a few, as you do with platys but I'm thinking of just putting a few males into the new tank and taking the rest to my fish shop....they always take my babies. Do you see a problem with this? I would prefer to keep the males as that way I won't end up adding pregnant females, which, let's face it, would be pretty much guaranteed . How many would be a happy number?
My next question is, I have bought a piece of spider wood, which according to the label is pre-washed and disinfected. I submerged it in boiling water too, and then added it to the tank. Now it has developed a kind of grey/green fuzz/fur.....any ideas? Could it be harmful to my fish when I add them?
That's all for now....though I anticipate more questions to come!
Thanks in advance

Hi Resa, glad to hear from you again 

I had a white jelly appear on some of my wood pieces; it went away eventually. This wood was soaked in a bucket for about 3 weeks as it wouldn't sink, then the jelly appeared after it went in the tank.
But I understand that the mould that grows on some types of wood can be poisonous to fish, so unless you have some plants attached to the wood, I'd be inclined to scrub it off when it appears. If you are worried about damaging the biofilm which will be growing on the wood by scrubbing it under the tap, use a bucket filled with dechlorinated water and attack just the area with fuzz on it.

Hi Resa,

I have some variatus platies in my temperate tanks. Only 1 male, and he is in a seperate tank to the females since the babies happened. He seems fine on his own with the white cloud mountain monnows, peppered cories and amano shrimp. The females have all been seperated from the male for quite some time, and share a tank with zebra and leoprad danios, peppered cories and amano shrimp. I was given the advice that male platies didn't get on awfully well together in a single sex tank, so I didn't increase the numbers when I seperated the male. The females are all fine together though.

I am also currently doing battle with fluffy growth on someof the wood in my dwarf puffer tank, so my sympathies are with you there. I've had a similar piece of wood in with my male platy, but that hasn't had any problems, possibly because I also have shrimp in that tank.

Best of luck with your tank and I'm looking forward to hearing about your progress. 

Best of luck