Newborn Platy Fry...help!

[platyfisher]

hey,
my daughter is nine and we bought her a tank for her birthday. we've had it for about 2 months now, and one of our platies just gave birth. she really wants to keep them, but i don't know what to do. one of them was eaten by another and i would really like to get the other two out before it happens to them too....HELP

 

[paul_219]

You must setup another tank so when they breed u move the parents to the other tank for not making ht parents eat them.

You must setup another tank so when they breed u move the parents to the other tank for not making ht parents eat them. What size is ur tank?

 

[Colin_T]

you can buy a breeding net from the fish shop and hang it in the main tank. The baby fish get put into it and live there until they are big enough to go in the tank with everyone else.
In an emergency you can use a 2litre icecream bucket with a few small holes poked in it. Use a couple of pegs to hold the bucket to the side of the tank. Put the baby fish in the bucket until they are bigger.

 

[OldMan47]

A way to have some of the fry survive is to make sure that there are lots of very small hiding places in the tank. Things like plants in a dense planting work fine. I use hornwort as cover for my fry. It floats around in the tank but has very fine leaves that the fry can hide among. If there is plenty of cover, you will likely have 5 to 10 platies survive from a batch of fry. That does not mean that there were only 10 born, more often its closer to 50. The key here is to get enough cover to be satisfied with the survival rate while not overpopulating the tank.