Platy Advice

Before you get any platies, you need to think about your water parameters. Is your water soft, hard or somewhere in between? The fish you already have all like soft water, though some species are OK in hard-ish water as well. But platies are hard water fish which would not be happy in soft water.
So the first thing to do is look at your water company's website and see if you can find out how hard your water is. Some companies make it difficult to find this info, so if you can't find it, post the name of the company and we'll have a look. When you do find it, we need both the number and the units as they could use any one of half a dozen different units.
One type of platy needs a hardness above 10 German degrees, the other above 14.

But to answer your questions about platies -
If females have ever been in a tank with a male for longer than about 10 seconds they will be carrying sperm packets. They can use these to have batches of fry about once a month for 6 months or so. So it's not just the fry they will be carrying when you buy them but 6 months of future fry as well.
All fish will eat fry, including the fish that just gave birth to it. The best thing with livebearers is to let them give birth in the tank rather than a tiny breeder box. Some fry will survive, especially if there are hiding places such as plants (real or fake)
Female livebearers are not like males. Females don't try to mate with other fish, including males of their species. It is only males that do this.
While they are not a shoaling species, I think platies are one of the fish that do need the company of their own kind. But apart from males trying to mate with other species when they have none of their own females, platies are peaceful community fish. I don't think they would bother gouramis.



But you do need to see if your water is hard enough for them first.

There are half a dozen hardness units and in fishkeeping we use just two. These are ppm (which is the same as mg/l CaCO3) and German degrees, often called just degrees or dH in fish profiles.


This is a bit confusing as 160 ppm = 8.9 German degrees, and 10 German degrees = 179 ppm. The two figures they give are not equivalent. Looking at the other two units (French deg and Clark deg) they correspond to 160 ppm rather than the German deg figure so I would take your hardness as being
160 ppm
9 German deg (rather than the 10 they give)


This is a bit on the low side for platies. There are two species of platy, Xiphophorus maculatus and X. variatus, but most of the fish in shops will be hybrids, with a bit of swordtail also in the mix. X. maculatus needs a hardness of over 180 ppm and X. variatus needs over 250 ppm. 160 ppm is a bit too low for platies I'm afraid.

Are there any other fish species that you like?

You have gourami, rasboras, neons and cherry barbs at the moment. So something that will go with them.

There is one option - if you have a Maidenhead Aquatics near you, I know that can get albino cherry barbs if they don't already have some because I got some from there a few years ago. The male is bright orange and the female bright yellow. They also have red eyes. Not the eye ring but the eyeball itself, which apparently puts some people off. Because you already have cherry barbs you wouldn't need a full shoal of the albinos. I'll attach photos of the ones I had.

I am like apache6467 and not to keen on albino's. I love the look of the neon rainbow fish but it looks like it will go after my bloody mary shrimps & tangerine tigers not that they are going to survive as they keep going in the filter at the moment

Gold barbs maybe a bit aggressive according to some research.

Thanks Sue

I have juwel built in bio filter and they go in the grill. I have tried a filter sponge but as it gets soaked it drops away from the top grill at the bottom there is a grill but cant get to it to put anything there. already lost 2 bloody mary's as they got down wedged between the sponges but have fished out 5 and saved them. 

I have tried everything i can think of and my only other option would be to set up a shrimp tank and then transfer to the bigger tank when they get bigger and cant get in the filter. The other thing is i am not sure it's worth it due to the life span of the shrimp.

How long does it take for shrimps to become adult's because if it's 6 months then it would not be worth it as i have read red cherry family live about 12 months. I think the tigers live longer as the armanos.

With my red cherries, I had a newly hatched shrimp grow enough to breed in two and half months. To be precise, hatched on 27 July, carrying eggs 5 October.

I think it's worth considering setting up a shrimp tank maybe after xmas . one other thing would Sue would guppy's want the same conditions as platys for water hardness or are they more adaptable as again i have read conflicting reports but i would rather trust the advice from here.

Thank you Sue & Apache for your advice

My go-to site is Seriously Fish. Here is what they say about guppies http://www.seriouslyfish.com/species/poecilia-reticulata/
You hardness is just above the bottom of their range so they should be OK. Male guppies can sometimes squabble and their tails can be a bit nipped, but with plenty clean water that should heal. Female guppies aren't as pretty 

well i have no idea but im sure i have both when i get 10 (hopefully) next week when my LFS has them back in stock