Help! Babies! Asap!

[Bluesand1313]

It wasn't Mickey, it was way to fast to have been him. Victoria must have been pregnant when I got her. They are Red Wag Platy's, and now I get home from school to see baby fishies in my tank!!!!

I only have two guppies in the tank, and it has a black background and no light (other then my lamp) so it was a bit hard to see. But I looked in there and I saw what looked like food, but NOPE! It's a little baby fishie! There are a few others that are floating at the top, they are ether close to death or already dead, but there are quite a few strong ones swimming about.


I am COMPLETELY unprepared for this! I really need help! I have NEVER bred or even thought of breeding before, so I don't know anything about anything!! Sorry, I'm just really panicking!

What do I feed them? When do I separate them? Will I have to turn off the filter? The parents seem to have eaten most of them, but there is quite a few plants so some will most likely survive. Anything I need to know is WELL appreciated! PLEASE HELP ASAP!

 

[techen]

It wasn't Mickey, it was way to fast to have been him. Victoria must have been pregnant when I got her. They are Red Wag Platy's, and now I get home from school to see baby fishies in my tank!!!!

I only have two guppies in the tank, and it has a black background and no light (other then my lamp) so it was a bit hard to see. But I looked in there and I saw what looked like food, but NOPE! It's a little baby fishie! There are a few others that are floating at the top, they are ether close to death or already dead, but there are quite a few strong ones swimming about.


I am COMPLETELY unprepared for this! I really need help! I have NEVER bred or even thought of breeding before, so I don't know anything about anything!! Sorry, I'm just really panicking!

What do I feed them? When do I separate them? Will I have to turn off the filter? The parents seem to have eaten most of them, but there is quite a few plants so some will most likely survive. Anything I need to know is WELL appreciated! PLEASE HELP ASAP!

If you can't handle it then chances are the babies will most likely die anyway. This is fine as it's quite hard to be suddenly ready for babies. You'd need a net to keep them in or they run risk of being sucked up into the filter, Turning the filter off wouldn't be the best of ideas. Sorry am not much help but I don't do breeding myself.

 

[Bluesand1313]

I've put them in a Betta cup. We have a breeding net but it broke. Go figure. So right now they are in a betta cup, floating around the tank.

 

[CMartino]

Just feed them standard flake food ground up. When I mean ground up I'm talking about so much so the stuff looks like powder and sprinkle about a grain of rice worth in each day and they will come up and peck it.

Don't worry if they aren't so hungry for the first day though since they still have the egg sack attached from the mother so they will either struggle to swim or not even swim at all - hence why you might be seeing them floating around and not doing much at all.

Just feed them often but not so much so you soil their water, remember they empty their stomach contents every 20 minutes!

 

[Bluesand1313]

Alright, thank you! Yes, most of the time they are just lying on the bottom of the betta cup, though a few are swimming around already. Some even peck at little food things in the water (I put in a tiny bit before I left to go somewhere in case they were hungry) but they didn't seem much interested in it. I'm glad that it's not much of a problem right now.

 

[the_lock_man]

I don't do breeding myself.

And neither do his fish.......


Anyway, back to the thread, good advice so far, you also need to do daily water changes.

In the long term, you need to figure out what you can do with the fry. Like I said in the other thread, livebearers breed like mad, each female can drop around 30 fry every 4-6 weeks, and can store sperm for 6 months, to keep on having fry-drops even without a fertile male in their tank.

The problem is that platies are so easy to obtain and to breed, there is no value in them, and finding a fish shop to take them will be difficult. I know some people in the States have been able to use Craigslist to move the fry, I'm not sure if you have Craigslist in Canada, but I would assume there is an equivalent, as there is in the UK.

In my opinion, it's better to let nature take its course, let the adult fish consume the fry, and you'll maybe onl;y have the odd one or two fish survive to maturity.

 

[Bluesand1313]

I took a picture.

There are twelve in all, I am sure there are no more. If there is, they are hiding very well in my tank!
Thank goodness I had lots of plants in the tank, otherwise none would have survived.
They live, for now, in a betta cup. When my water gets a bit better, I will put them in a breeding net. (Fixed it, lol. )

I would let them eat them, but to be honest, when they were in the tank swimming freely, the parents didn't seem all to interested in them. Plus my heart is too kind to let them consume the fry. I wouldn't be able to do it.
We have Kijiji, and Craigslist. I also have quite a few friends and such. If worst comes to worst, I have a friend that owns a Pet Store (Her father does, anyways. It's family-run) and they take really good care of their fish, and they would most likely take them for me.

 

[greenmumma141]

In my first 10 gal. tank, I had quite the same situation, surprise surprise, platy babies!!! You can keep them in the betta cup for now, but they grow pretty fast and I had a couple, very teeny tiny babies in the tank with all my other fish (just platies, guppies, and neons) and they survived to be big. My tank had quite a places to hide, i would suggest a big piece of wood, fish tend to find little nooks to hid in, but if you dont have that, any plastic plant will float and is easy to pick up anywhere, and the babies will live in there until they're brave enough to come out. No, this doesn't give them a %100 survival rate, but 3 of mine made it, and i only found 5 or so of them to begin with!!! GL with the babies!!!!

 

[Bluesand1313]

Of course, I have everything planned out for when they get bigger. Thanks for the information! Will keep that in mind

 

[the_lock_man]

Best check with your friend's dad that they will take them, but if so, you're serously lucky!

 

[Bluesand1313]

He gave me a Free pet before, so I'm sure they would take the fish if asked. :3

 

[-Craig-]

My net was broken before so I used a big 3litre coke bottle haha I had around 20 that survived and some of them were awesome

 

[Bluesand1313]

That's good! I have around 8, and I WAS using a betta cup, but then I bought a breeder tank thing. We had a breeder net, but it broke and the one at the store didn't look too promising either. So we went with the plastic one.