vidiots
Fish Fanatic
I have tried the breeder traps for platies and mollies a number of times in the past. Maybe its because I keep my livebearers in a 55Gal tank, but they don't like being confined to a space that small one little bit. I have found a solution to this stress atleast for here. My solution was to buy one of those cheap complete 2.5Gal tank setups from Wal-Mart. (The whole setup cost about $30). Get the one with the air powered undergravel filter instead of the power filter. Get a large sheet of filter foam pad instead of gravel. Get some of those clumps of plastic "Baby Grass" and use large marbles or gravel in the center of the grass clumps to sink them. Place the pregnant female in the 2.5gal a few days before she is due. After she gives birth return her to the large tank. During birth the fry will hide in the plastic grass and the mother is usually too busy giving birth to more fry to pay any attention to the ones alread born. Using this technique I was able to save every last platy fry in the batch which was the largest I'd ever seen (about 75). It was neat to watch, that tank setup gave as an outstanding view of the birth. We (the whole family) watched them come out from 1 to 4 at a time. The whole thing from start to finish took about a couple hours. After a while we could predict when more were about to come out. The mother would swim up, then down then start back up again and squirt out some more. The mother did not go crazy trying to escape the 2.5Gal tank as she would have in one of those tiny breeder traps which I would estimate to be only about 1/2 Gal in size. The problem I ran into with a batch that big was that I couldn't keep them in a tank that small very long.
