Need advice for breeding setup

[GothFishKeeper]

So my current setup is a 20G tank with live plants including hornwort wrapped around some spider wood as a “tree” to provide cover for my molly fry. The issue is that I have 11 full size fish in my tank, and I already have 20+ fry from one of my mollies giving birth. On top of that I have two other pregnant mollies and a pregnant platy. I’m planning on getting a separate tank for raising the fry, but I don’t know what size to get, and if I need multiple tanks for different mothers or for different species. Would a 5-10 gallon tank work? If so how many of those do I need for potentially 50+ fry in total and can I have multiple species of fry in the same tank?

 

[emeraldking]

Smaller tanks for your fry will work. Putting fry of different livebearer species in one tank will work as well. Just be sure that if you're keeping those different fry together that once young males develop a gonopodium that they won't try to mate with young females of other livebearer species. I assume you're focusing on the commercial known livebearers. Platies and swordtails will crossbreed. Guppies, endlers and mollies can also crossbreed.
And depending on how big they'll get as being adults, the number of tanks may vary.

 

[GothFishKeeper]

Thanks so much, this is exactly the info I was looking for. As long as platies and mollies won’t mate with each other I won’t have issues because that’s all I have. I have another question though if you’d happen to know about it:
The fry I have currently have been in my tank for about a week now, and they haven’t beed fed any infusoria other than what may be in the tank already because I’ve been struggling to create a working culture. However, I finally managed to get a few decent cultures going in small jars last night using yeast instead of vegetables and they look pretty decent. My fry have seemed to be doing perfectly fine without anything but the stuff in the tank and they also have been eating the flakes I feed my adults. So once my cultures are complete in the next day or so, do I bother feeding infusoria to my current fry, or should I keep the cultures growing for the future groups I have incoming?

 

[emeraldking]

Why bother to give infusoria when they already do well on the same food as the adults? There's no need for that. I mainly keep and breed livebearers overhere and I don't use any infusoria for those fry. They even seek for food that is left by the adults between the gravel or what gets stuck in those plants.
It's good to get the advice to feed them infusoria but practically it's not needed. The thought of many peole is that those fry have small mouths. So, small food should be in order. But whatever food one uses, it will break down anyways. So, fry will have their small food already when the adults will be fed. And they'll grow up perfectly with the same food as the adults have.

 

[Colin_T]

Get some big plastic storage containers (100 litre or bigger if you can) and put the babies in that. The bigger the container, generally the faster they grow.

You can keep different babies together if they are the same size, but don't mix big and small fry together because the bigger fry either eat the small ones, or they eat all the food and the small ones starve.

Baby livebearers can eat newly hatched brineshrimp and microworms from day one. Egg layers like tetras, gouramis and barbs need infusoria but the livebearers don't.