Hello and help please

[Rosierover]

Hi and thanks for letting me join.

I have been keeping plattys for about 4 years and have been very fortunate that we have not had any problems until now.

We introduced a new male with our 8 young females, or at least we thought we had 8 females. It became apparent very quickly that one female developed into a male and he was dominant. Another female appeared to be making the transition to male at the same time. I’m not even sure if this is possible! Now the one who was almost male appeared to become pregnant about 2 months ago? However she/he is not looking well at all and I don’t know what to do. I have added a photo but it was taken on my phone and he/she was swimming about quite merrily.

We have a 64ltr tank with 7/8 female plattys, 2 x zebra snails and 2 x red spotted snails.

The dominant male is now in another tank as he got very aggressive with all the girls.

Weekly 20% water change and fed on freeze dried brine shrimp,
Nitrite 0ppm
Nitrate 0ppm
Ammonia 0.25ppm remover added

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Colin_T]

Hi and welcome to the forum

Young male platies look like females until they mature. Then their anal fin changes shapes and turns into a long thin tube shaped fin called a gonopodium (modified anal fin used to impregnate female fish with sperm packets).

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re: the fish in the picture. What does the anal fin on this fish normally look like?
The tail and dorsal fin looked pretty chewed up. Is that from fighting with the bigger male?

The fish has a gravid spot (dark patch in front of the anal fin, usually indicative of developing embryos in a female). However, the fish also appears to be very fat just under the gills and this could indicate an internal growth or intestinal worms rather than developing babies.

The scales also appear to be sticking out sideways a bit from the body, which would indicate an internal infection. Do the scales stick out from the body or is it the picture?

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If you have an aggressive male, you could return it and get a different one. Sometimes you get agro fish and they will pass their agro genes on to their offspring. This is not a good trait for platies to have.

 

[Rosierover]

Thank you for taking the time to reply, I apologise for my delay in updating.

The aggressive male platy has been re homed. I hadn’t appreciated how much damage he had inflicted on the females until I took him out and gave them all a good check over.

The female I was most concerned about (in the picture) had hidden herself away for a few days and the. reappeared looking much thinner, so I assumed she had given birth. Unfortunately there are no signs of fry and sadly she passed away yesterday.

The other females in the tank seem quite content so for now I am not going to add another male or any other fish. The tank looks empty but at least it is calm.

Thank you once again for your help.

 

[Jack TH]

There is no need to get any new males anyway, all of the females will continue to give birth to fry as they are already fertilised.