How Come My Livebearers Won't Have Any Babies!?

[fry_forever!]

Hi. I have a 20 gallon tank full of livebearers, who never, ever have babies. Right now, they have ich/whitespot, so I can see the reason, but even when they don't have ich, I never get babies in my tank. I sometimes try to get the almost-in-labour fish into a breeder net, but I've learned that that mostly causes stillbirths.

When I don't put my fish in the net to have babies, they rarely even do have babies.... (They do once every 6 months.) When they do, I manage to only save 1-3, which IS better than nothing, but most of them die from a disease that infests one of my tanks, anyways.

I don't know what to do. This ich/whitespot is taking over, and despite all my treatments, (temp at 86F, increased aeration, and Jungle Labs parasite Clear used once every 2 days, according to instructions.) it still won't go away! Even when I don't have ich, my fish never have babies!

Once I got a batch of 30 babies from one of my platies, but I just bought her from the petshop a day or so earlier, and I caught the birth when I got home from school.

Why does everyone have so much success with their livebearers, whereas I rarely get one baby!

Sorry for being so miserable, but I'm almost ready to give up taking care of livebearers.

Here are some pics of the very pregnant ones that haven't dropped their fry in at least 5 months:
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P.S. I have guppies, platies, mollies and swordtails.

Thanks in advance for any help and/or encouragement!

P.P.S. I know my signature says that I have LOTS of fry, but most of them are from my friend, and most of them are 6 months old, and LOTS for me is about... 5! =)

 

[lilfishie]

none of them look very pregnant if pregnant at all to me.

however if you have mixed sexes then i don't see why they aren't getting pregnant.

 

[HCpetraitis]

It could be stress that they never have babies and when they do they can abort them and only have eggs.

 

[fry_forever!]

Well they are extremely pregnant, and I just treated them for ich with Jungle Parasite Clear.
Thanks!

 

[susankat]

Looking at the gravid spot, they don't look pregnant to me either. Just look like over weight fish.

 

[pippoodle]

the sword could be pregnant as you can see a small birthing tube there

they look extremly over fed hun - sorry to say - but if you look at the fish they are fat at the front end , where a healthy weight pregnant fish is mostly squared off at the rear end , being over weight can stop pregnancys or cause them to absorb or abort the fry

cut the feeding down to every other day
and see how they go

mollys and guppy can crossbreed so you might end up with hybrids
platys and swords can also cross so asgain you might end up with hybrids

very fat at the front end aswell as rear end could be pregnant but unable to tell cause of over feeding

again very fat at the front

again very fat but if pregnant i'd say about 1-2 weeks

 

[Jdubz]

Swordtails eat alot of babies ive got 4 females and had them a couple of months and only just got 10 babies!

 

[fry_forever!]

Thank you very much. I actually think most of it was the ich, because I sucked at treating ich, but now I found the best cure, (temp at 87F, extra oxygen, jungle parasite clear.) so it's gone!

Thanks for all the help, will probably be seeing babies soon!

 

[loraxchick]

mollies and guppies hybridize?

 

[fry_forever!]

mollies and guppies hybridize?

Yup.

 

[loraxchick]

wow. i could see platties ans swords but... learn somethin new everyday around here!!

 

[lilfishie]

yep guppies and mollies can hybridyze, and a member on here did it once, all but one fry died off early, the remaining one got pretty big, don't know what happened to it in the end though

Edit: found the topic but sadly piccys not working any more HERE

 

[loraxchick]

interesting

 

[fry_forever!]

interesting

Yes, very cool. Too bad the pics don't work though...

 

[OldMan47]

Although it is technically possible for a guppy / molly hybrid, I have kept those 2 fish together for many years and have never had it happen. The only likely way that it might happen would be if you only had one gender of each fish and no suitable mates otherwise for either fish. Even then it is not at all common. As far as a chance cross between the two, I would not worry about it.