Pregnant red wag platy

[blj32109]

I just realized last night that I have a pregnant red wag platy. The unfortunate thing is that she and her male are in a tank with semi aggressive fish. Should I take them out or leave them or should I put in a breeder tank or net? I'm pretty new to this, so I'm not sure of what to do! Help!

 

[Newman]

do you want to attempt to raise many platy fry? if you do, you only need to separate the female from the rest of the tank. unfortunately this will stress her and depending on what the enclosure is, she may not want to give birth or not give birth correctly. If you try a breeder net, beware of when she starts to pace the sides. i have seen the female get a lip infection because she rubs her face on the net too much as she is frantically pacing the sides of the net/trap, trying to get into the main tank. If you can setup another tank, like a 10 or 5.5 gal ahead of time and cycle it, then she can be moved into that and things should go a lot smoother. just provide the fry with some floating plants to hide in from the parent.

If you decide not to move the mother at all, just put a whole mass of floating plants in the main tank. make them dense enough so that the other fish cannot go through, but fry can. when she gives birth, you will find some fry in the floating plants that you can net out and move to a rearing tank, or a breeders net (fry are not likely to get hurt in a breeders net/trap, but the adult female can like i mentioned earlier.) in any case always cover the breeding tank/net/trap so that fish cant jump out. some may try

 

[blj32109]

Thanks, Newman, that helped alot. It looks like she's going to have a whole lot of little ones, so we are going to separate them once they are born and then we'll figure out what we're going to do with them. I would just let nature take its course, and let them get eaten, but I can't stand the thought of the babies getting eaten!