Baby Platys

Hi Folks!

Just thought I'd ask stupid question number 474   What does everybody else do with their fry?  I now know that I definitely have 10 platy fry...possibly a few more.  Now, considering that my girls are likely to do this to me again...and without taking in to account what the babies will produce as soon as they are old enough, I am heading for a tank filled up to its capacity with blue marble platys!  Now, much as I love them, I do want to keep space for my pandas.  I'm thinking that probably my only option is to see if the fish shops would be interested in taking them, I don't know their policies on this.  Has anyone done this in the UK?  Anyone have any other suggestions?
Stupid question no.475.  Is there any kind of inbreeding problem if I keep some of the babies?  You know, father/daughter, sister/brother that kind of thing?

Anyway, all thoughts appreciated,

Resa
 

You could just keep buying tanks to put them in. 

You could try asking at your local shops. If they will take them the best you can hope for is a credit note. In the UK at least, shops will not pay cash for fish. Any shops that will take them will most likely expect you to keep them until they are the same size as the ones they are currently selling. The main problem you may have is that livebearers are so easy to breed that they are very cheap for the shop to buy from their wholesaler, and if they take fish from every customer who asks they'd have no room for any other fish.

In the UK, we can put fish on ebay - though strictly speaking Royal Mail will only carry fry so adult fish are supposed to sent by courier or collection only. Before going down this route, I would see if the French version of ebay has any restrictions on live fish, and what the situation is regarding postage.

We also have aquarist-classifieds, a website for selling fish related things. Is there anything similar in France?  (NOTE for UK members - there is a warning from someone on another site saying they got a nasty trojan from aq-class, be careful if you visit the site)



As for inbreeding - are all your platies the same colour variety from the same shop? If they are, they are likely to be related; if not, they won't be. Inbreeding is only a problem after a few generations, and is commonly done to develop new colour strains. Father/daughter and mother/son is acceptible. Brother/sister is less so. The way round it is to get a totally unrelated male and see if a shop will take any males you may have now that are related to your females.
If at all possible, separate your male and female fry as soon as you can see the males developing a gonopodium. Virgin females will not have any fry, and neither will males if you keep one or the other and rehome the adults you have now.

Just males will probably fight. I've got my two male platies separated in different tanks as one bullied the other so much. They were best of friends when young, but after a few months then problems became apparant.

I don't know if keeping more than two might help as then any aggresion would be spread out..... but I did have four males at one time and things were getting more and more difficult, so I don't know if this was a contibuting factor in them turning up their little fishy toes.

I've not had experience of keeping male platies together so I would listen to someone like Colin who has. In theory at least, females should be OK together - but if they've ever spent more than 30 seconds in the same tank as a male they'll be carrying sperm and will carry on having fry once a month for approx another six months. The advantage with platies is that the females are as colourful as the males.

One thing you could try - rehome the adults you have now then the males from the fry. That would leave you with virgin females - unless your adult male has already got at them. They can be inseminated very young. In which case, rehome your males and the current fry before any more are born, then rehome the male fry from subsequent batches. That would limit the number of fry you'll have in total and leave you with just females.

Or any other permuation you can think of 

Wow all very complicated!

I should have known that there would be a snag with my tank sooner or later   Didn't expect it to be sweet little babies!  Oh my goodness, this is going to take some working out   My son has two tanks for me in the UK but we can't get them over here just yet, they will have to wait until someone is going to or from here in the car, to give them their best chance of arriving in one piece!  Anyway, I'd have to cycle them before I could use them.  Meanwhile, my babies are getting bigger every day....Colin, you fibbed, you said this was a relaxing hobby

Resa
 

Sue yes must admit I'm very glad I declined the offer of a free female endler the LFS accidentally put in the bag with my fish! Though judging by Colin's dilemma RE: shrimp, I'm going to have similar problems when I get shrimp too!

Hey,hey....who are you calling common?

Ooh that's good, would fish shops be more likely to take baby shrimps then? How long do I have to wait until I can get them again? :-D