Pregnant Platy Gave Birth?

[Nevergone815]

over the night my platy must have given birth because when i woke up in the morning and checked the tank i saw a little orangish colored fish. but before i could really get a good look another fish in my tank ate it. i don't see anymore and my fear is that they are all eaten. do they give birth all at once? or is it a gradual thing? she still looks chubby and i put her in a breeder just in case. please respond asap.

 

[Annastasia]

It depends on the female. Some have them all in one go, while others take a few days, sometimes up to a week.

I wouldn't keep her in the breeder net for very long, as it can stress them out. It'd also probably be particulary stressful for her if she was in the middle of giving birth. Keep in mind most Livebearering females have a few embryos of different sizes growing in them at the same time, so some of the weight may be from that. How dark is her gravid spot?

Good luck, I hope you get some fry!

 

[Nevergone815]

by gravid spots i'm asuming that they are the dots behind her belly. they are really dark but she only has 2 of them that i can see. she used to have much more but were much fainter in color. people told me that she was just pregnant and that she had weeks to go yet so i was keeping her in my community tank until it was time for her to give birth. i know it could be stressful to the fish being kept in the breeder and thats why i wanted to wait until the last possible moment that i could. right now i have her in a 10 gal tank that i am using for breeding. she's the only one and she seems really calm in the breeder in there. there isn't exactly a whole lot of hiding places in the tank for the fry yet and i don't want the mom to eat the babies.

 

[Annastasia]

The dots behind her belly are most likely the fry's eyes. The gravid spot refers to the whole dark patch there. If you can see eyes of fry, then she should have more soon, as the fry are pretty well developed. Can you tell if it's eyes or not?

It's hard for anyone to predict how pregnant someone else's fish is, because they just vary. Some get hugely fat, and some barely do. One of my females barely gets past a little fat, and then she has her fry. She only has a couple per batch, but it's every month. So it's impossible to say how far along someone else's fish is, very accurately, because they all differ.

Okay, as long as she doesn't look or seem stressed, she should be okay. I wouldn't recommend you keep her in there more then 2-3 days though, because after that is when it can get very stressful. Your breeding tank sounds pretty good. Maybe next batch you can put her in there for the birth. One of the best ways to get hiding places for the fry, is floating plants. Hornwort is especially good. But any dense ones are great hiding places for fry. You can pretty much be assured you'll get some fry if you have floating plants.

 

[Nevergone815]

UPDATE:

the dots are all gone now and she inished while i was gone. i went into the tank to clean up the residue of a very uneffective medicine and cleaned the tank. remind you this is my community tank (i put her back in there figuring "oh well if i don't catch them at least she won't get stressed"). well it turns out that i found 13 platty fry hiding underneath the gravel at the bottom of my tank. well i put the fry in the breeder to let them grow out a little before introducing them to my cory, pleco and algae eater tank. i'm doing this because this has gravel too and i don't want to go play "find the fishy" well 3 of them died during the exchange so i fed them to my male bettas and boy did they love that . well just wanted to leave an update, thanks again for the help Annastasia. hey i noticed you helped me on a lot of my posts lol , thanks for all of them too!!!