Balloon Platy Or Just Plain Fat?

[littleme1969]

Well I'm probably going to end up with egg on my face here, but here goes anyhow..
I have 3 female platies all from the same batch of fry that are huge in girth!.. No they don't get any smaller when they have fry.. to be honest i'm not sure if they ever have. Just looking through some pics on here and came across pics of balloon mollies and wondered if there was such a thing as a balloon platy? or I have got an obesity problem on my hands.. take a look at the pics below..

In the one below shes in the top right hand corner swimming with the normal preggers platy females just to give scale..

And in this one you can see her sister in the background though shes not quite as big as this one

All 3 fish seem really healthy and are over a year old now... any suggestions?

 

[Lexie3787]

Somehow a mix of ballon molly and a platy Im sorry but that fish is sooooo funny looking, its cute. I have no idea of how it got that way I just wanted to say its cute as hell

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

I would say that is a platy, not a balloon molly, as far as i know, you dont get that coloration at all in balloon mollys- and platys and mollys cannot crossbreed with each other either.

....Soo, i think you are looking at the most pregnant platy ever !

 

[littleme1969]

Thanks.. .. but i'm still non the wiser..lol
I don't have and have never had any mollies, and as far as I am aware the original fish I bought were from pure bred platy stock and were all destinctive line.. i.e. wag tail twin bar mickey mouse etc. As for being pregnant.. if the fish ever got any thiner i would say yes that could be it. I have other platys that get quite big then go back to normal size after giving birth, but this fish is always like that!! Huge!! .. and her 2 sister are just a little smaller, but again they never get any smaller.
I did move them from a 30 gallon tank into the 95g in the hope the extra exercise would help.. ROFL a bit of aqua aerobics maybe..ROFL But no change.. just fat fish.. You would think a one of would be a freak, but I got 3 of these. Some one most have some ideas..lol Or maybe we should open a section for freaky fish

 

[Polardbear]

If it makes you feel any better, one of my first batches of swordtails had some serious weight issues. I ended up with 6 of them, 5 females and 1 male and they were the fatest swordtails I've ever seen. When the male finally developed his gonopdium and swordtail he slimmed down some but was still pretty chunky. The girls were always roly poly. (Actually the term corpulant comes to mind...) I attributed it to my overfeeding them constantly as fry. They were quite funny as adults, no one got in there way at feeding time. You might try feeding them more vegetables (peas are excellant) and less high protein/fatty foods.
Maybe put them in a seperate tank so they can't eat everyone elses food.

 

[fish4meplz]

Personally I dont n what the deal is but your fish looks funny as hell to me.

 

[tetraqueen]

I would just like to say, you said they were healthy and they all look fine to me. I wonder how many are watched the wild to see if they are like humans of all shapes and sizes.

Watch this space the Tropical fish dietline. Swimfit to become Tanktastic ('', 'smid_22')

Do not feed to much. Yes but they will get what else is in the tank.
I have had a cat 13 years now fat fat fat. Well no matter what diet he's been on he goes and catches more mice if i feed less. Or better still sleeps all the time.

Sometimes its as one says they are pregnant.
I have been told they try not to give birth until its a good time so perhaps a quieter tank might be better. I dunno I have had no experience. The others who read this will put this right. This might of course be for egg layers and not livebearing fish like the platy.

Just thoughts but then if we dont say we never get put right.

All the best enjoy they are so colourful and very pretty.

 

[phoenixfire]

cute fishy...lol and to me she doesnt look pregnant just fat...or maybe both...but shes healthy...great pictures to by the way!...what type of platies do u have, in one of the pictures i noticed a mickey mouse platy...and can i see a pic of your whole tank if u dont mind it looks beautifully landscaped with plants...thanks if ya can

 

[dwarfgourami]

I'm wondering if it could be some sort of mutation. After all, what are ballon mollies but slightly deformed mollies that somebody decided to breed from? I have a platy with a slightly odd body, her spine is slightly u-shaped and her tummy is more convex in proportion. She might well grow up looking a bit like yours. She is perfectly healthy, I am just not going to breed from her as I dont think hers is a shape to be encouraged.

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

Well I'm probably going to end up with egg on my face here, but here goes anyhow..
I have 3 female platies all from the same batch of fry that are huge in girth!.. No they don't get any smaller when they have fry.. to be honest i'm not sure if they ever have. Just looking through some pics on here and came across pics of balloon mollies and wondered if there was such a thing as a balloon platy? or I have got an obesity problem on my hands.. take a look at the pics below..

In the one below shes in the top right hand corner swimming with the normal preggers platy females just to give scale..

And in this one you can see her sister in the background though shes not quite as big as this one

All 3 fish seem really healthy and are over a year old now... any suggestions?

How many inches long and wide is she roughly? She looks very healthy to me, and may seem abnormal in size to the rest of the platys in the tank, but livebearers have been getting smaller over time from poor breeding- she may just have better genes than the rest of the platys; i was looking at one of my larger female platys earlier, and she doesnt seem that much smaller than yours at first glance.

 

[Ddraig Goch]

If she is pregnant I wouldn't expect fry for another couple of weeks going by the picture.

Have you seen the Giant Platy thread? It could be that you have just bred a large Platy like those........... http/www.fishforums.net/index.php?showtopic=122544

Mine was a red wag tail, she was at least 3 inches long, VERY fat ALL the time and gave birth to 180 fry in her first ever batch!!! Keep a look out for fry, you might get a lot (100+) of tiny fry, or just a few (20-40) huge ones!

If she's healthy I wouldn't worry.

 

[Bec1984]

Is the Platy Black above its anal fin (not the fin its self but on the body) if it is then yes it is Pregnant,
also how much do you feed your fish and how often?
how often do you test your water ie: nitrates/nitrites, ammonia levels, ph levels ect and cycle your aquarium
As it could be a bacterial infection due to poor water quality in the tank,
how long has she been this big for?


And no there is no such thing as a balloon Platy, only Platys and swordtails can cross breed not Platy and Balloon Mollies.


Bec 1984

 

[Annastasia]

She doesn't look quite right to me....but then, neither do Balloon Mollies, so don't trust me. Does she seem pretty active and healthy?

And no there is no such thing as a balloon Platy, only Platys and swordtails can cross breed not Platy and Balloon Mollies

Well, Balloon Mollies were made by Line-breeding a default a few fish had, and then making it more and more pronounced. So it's entirely possible that someday there may be a Balloon Platy, without having to be crossed with a Molly.

 

[littleme1969]

Thanks for all the comments.. answers to questions as follows.
The fish is the standard length of a platy, just twice as deep..lol
Ive been keeping fish for years, so yes I do know when they are preggers or not. I would say this fish has never had fry. It was kept in a 30 gallon with its 2 sisters once i realised it was getting huge, that was 9 months ago. They were there for 6 months and had no fry what so ever, so I would say that the obesity, like in humans, has contributed to it and its siblings being sterile. Once I reaslised that the fish were in good health and either a Balloon platy in the making or just plain fat, i moved all 3 back into the 95gallon tank with the rest of the platties. Its size has never changed, if anything its got even bigger the last 3 months.
She and her sisters are in perfect health, no signs of dropsy or other issues that would indicate an internal infection.
As you have established, as yet, there is no such thing as a balloon platy, I'm putting this down to a genetic problem that has caused the fish to overeat. It never stops!! They live in a heavily planted tank, and there is alwasys lots of bits of leaves floating around and the fish seems to spend its days grazing on plant matter, or cleaning up the bit of hair algae that grows on certain plants. So no need for more veg in their diet as mentioned before, but a good point. I'm not prepared to risk the health of the other fish who are of normal size by reducing food into the tank. That would be unfair, as I don't overfeed them anyhow.
So I guess its a case of let it eat itself to death and put bets on how big it gets before it explodes..LOL . I shoudn't laugh really , but apart from putting it in a tank on its own and starving the poor thing to death with a baron enviroment and no plant snacks, there is little I can do. That would be no life for what is a cute fish with bags of charachter.
Ok she may not be a Balloon Platy... but I still wub Her

 

[Bec1984]

She doesn't look quite right to me....but then, neither do Balloon Mollies, so don't trust me. Does she seem pretty active and healthy?

And no there is no such thing as a balloon Platy, only Platys and swordtails can cross breed not Platy and Balloon Mollies

How do you think Balloon Mollies were made? Line-breeding a default a few fish had, and then making it more and more pronounced. So it's entirely possible that someday there may be a Balloon Platy.

No need to get smart with me i was only stating a known fact that mollies and platys have never cross bred and that the possibility of them cross breeding is slim to none.....