Heavily Pregnant Platy Mating Again

[monkeyhanger]

I have a heavily pregnant Platy that I thought was ready to drop the fry over a week ago. She's been pregnant for at least 5 weeks and is now twice the size of the males I have in the tank.

She's pooing normally, has a healthy appetite, but seems quite shy lately unless she's prowling for food.

I have a red wagtail male and a silver blue young male in the tank, and the red wagtail never leaves her alone. For the last few days she's been friendly with the silver/blue one, and last night put up no resistance to him mating with her.

Is it normal for a Platy to allow matiing when it's so heavily pregnant?

I get the impression that its about 4 weeks for gestation in a platy - how much longer than this can a pregnancy sometimes take? Mine seems overdue, and hasn't got any bigger for almost a week now. As she's not constipated and acting normally, I don't think she's fry-bound.

Any ideas?

 

[lilfishie]

can you get a picture of her? this will help determin exactly how pregnant she is

 

[monkeyhanger]

can you get a picture of her? this will help determin exactly how pregnant she is

I'll try, she's quite camera shy. She used to be very inquisitive, but now she darts away under cover when the tank is watched. She's very barrelled around the belly, and what i'd consider to be squared off (but i'm only going by pics on other posts).

She could be a little stressed, we have some meds in at the moment for suspected columnaris/NTD amongst my neon tetras. A few cardinals have been a little fluffy too. The dead or very ill looking ones were swiftly removed - I've lost 9 out of 10 of my neons lately. All other tankmates have been fine.

Been using 1/2 dose myxazin and pimafix.

The biggest surprise to me was how much she'd been chasing off the red wagtail, but allowed the silver blue one to mate without resistance.

 

[pippoodle]

can you post your water stats?
ammonia
nitrites
nitrates
ph temp

how often do you do your water changes and when was the last gravel vac
how often do you feed the fish and how much ?

 

[monkeyhanger]

can you post your water stats?
ammonia
nitrites
nitrates
ph temp

how often do you do your water changes and when was the last gravel vac
how often do you feed the fish and how much ?

Ammonia = 0ppm
Nitrites = 0ppm
Nitrates are always less than 5ppm.
pH = 7.4
Water temp = 24C

All above stats are solidly stable, never fluctuate.

I generally clean out every 5 days, 20 - 30% water change, although sometimes I feel i'm doing too much cleaning - too much cleaning can sometimes encourage faster algae growth etc if you're always battling to remove stuff like that, can't it?

Maybe I should just do enough to vac the poo and any other debris? Could get 90% of that out with only a 10% water change every 5 days.

I do have some white algae that builds up on the tank walls and hangs off the live plant leaves, not too much.

I condition the water with Prime.

Feed Aquarian tropical flakes and 1/2 an aquarian catfish tablet (for the cories), small amount twice a day - all gone in 2 mins. They get frozen bloodworm instead of the flakes once a week.

Last vac was 3 days ago.



The pregnant platy doesn't get much privacy - she can get away behind the 3 plants I have, or under the mopani root (the Cory Sterbais also sometimes take shelter under there but dont bother the Platy if she goes there). The red wag tail likes to follow her around, and now the silver-blue one does too.

 

[pippoodle]

my advice would be to cut the feeding down to every other day for 1 week and then just once a day
the fish wont stave in fact it's better for them

you cant clean up too much excess food and poop just do a good vac every week as your water change 30-40% weekly will be perfect to keep everyone fit and healthy

also add some more plants - and there needs to be at least 2 girls for every male with live bearers else the males will chase the girls so much they get so stressed they either can die or lose their fry - 3 girls for every 1 male worked very well for me - none of the girls were bullied

i would also watch the tank when the lights are on if your other fish keep dying and see whats going on when no ones around - watch it for a few hours if you can - even if it means turning the lights off earlier each night for a week
you should pick up if there is any other aggressiveness in the tank that needs dealing with




a lot of algae is caused by poor water flow
if you post in the plants section about the type of algae with a picture they'll be able to tell you the right course of action to help prevent the algae

 

[monkeyhanger]

my advice would be to cut the feeding down to every other day for 1 week and then just once a day
the fish wont stave in fact it's better for them

you cant clean up too much excess food and poop just do a good vac every week as your water change 30-40% weekly will be perfect to keep everyone fit and healthy

also add some more plants - and there needs to be at least 2 girls for every male with live bearers else the males will chase the girls so much they get so stressed they either can die or lose their fry - 3 girls for every 1 male worked very well for me - none of the girls were bullied

i would also watch the tank when the lights are on if your other fish keep dying and see whats going on when no ones around - watch it for a few hours if you can - even if it means turning the lights off earlier each night for a week
you should pick up if there is any other aggressiveness in the tank that needs dealing with




a lot of algae is caused by poor water flow
if you post in the plants section about the type of algae with a picture they'll be able to tell you the right course of action to help prevent the algae

The dead fish are just the neons. They all seemed to strt dying off after getting a little fluffy, which was attributed to Columnaris, and some displayed symptoms of NTD like bent spine etc. There were a few that appeared normal, but their gills were going like the clappers, and they got bullied by the other neons and cardinals.

There was one sickly looking neon that was basically headbutted by a group of 4 cardinals each taking it in turns, until it was unable to swim properly and was swimming along vertically rather than horizontally.

I've had 2 cardinals go too - one had a massive white ulcer on it's side that did not get any better after a week of meds, and another that had it's tail fin almost gone overnight.

 

[monkeyhanger]

Have 2 male and 2 female platy, will be getting another 2 females this week.

 

[monkeyhanger]

I upped the flowrate on my pump a little to improve water circulation - hopefully this will help with the algae.

Bought 2 more female platys last night - so I now have 2 males and 4 females. I got 2 Silver / blue holographic looking ones - they looked great at the LFS, one has clear fins and the other has navy blue fins. They started mixing with the others straight away. Was wanting another female in a different set of colours, but most of the rest at the LFS seemd to be male, except one that wouldn't drop it's fin to check the sex - i'll get it another time when more stock is in.

Starved everything yesterday - never seen my platys with so little poo trailing behind them!