Pregnant Swordtail/platy?

[Dieses Madchen]

I think we are going to have more fry. It wasn't until a week ago when I joined this site that I found out what to look for in a pregnant female. I think that my female is expecting fry again. Can anyone confirm? If you can also give me an idea of when to start looking for the fry. They will be moving to a much larger tank very soon and I would like to try to save some of the fry. (In the first picture, the small fish in the bottom right is her one surviving fry )

Also can someone verify exactly what type of fish this is? The pet store told me it was a "Sunfire Molly". To me, she looks like a Platy, but also looks like the female version of one of my swords. Is she a Platy or a sword? I know its not a molly because all of the male fish in my tank are swordtails, and I have read that they cannot crossbreed with mollies.

 

[OldMan47]

Your female looks like a platy more than a swordtail. In general a swordtail will be longer and slimmer in appearance than a platy. It is not a molly at all. The head shape is a dead giveaway for telling a molly from a platy. I would guess that you still have a week or so before your platy drops any fry.

 

[Dieses Madchen]

Your female looks like a platy more than a swordtail. In general a swordtail will be longer and slimmer in appearance than a platy. It is not a molly at all. The head shape is a dead giveaway for telling a molly from a platy. I would guess that you still have a week or so before your platy drops any fry.

Thank you. Im still new at the whole fish keeping stuff. The petstore told me it was a molly, and also told me it was a male. Then she had babies.

 

[tropics007]

Agreed. She is a beautiful platy and she is going to be dropping fry for you very soon. ( my guess is between 7-10 days ).

 

[Dieses Madchen]

Agreed. She is a beautiful platy and she is going to be dropping fry for you very soon. ( my guess is between 7-10 days ).

She's very friendly too. Whenever I get near the tank, she is right at the glass. I just wish she would stop munching her babies. I now of one batch she she had. I went to clean the tank, and when I moved some of the decor a little baby showed up. He's about an inch long now.

 

[OldMan47]

As you get more fry of different sizes in a tank, the adults tend to ignore new ones more. I run most of my single species livebearer tanks on the basis of simply providing good cover and allowing the adults to breed at will. It is called "colony breeding". The end result is that I always have a small surplus of adults to sell at local club auctions.

 

[Dieses Madchen]

As you get more fry of different sizes in a tank, the adults tend to ignore new ones more. I run most of my single species livebearer tanks on the basis of simply providing good cover and allowing the adults to breed at will. It is called "colony breeding". The end result is that I always have a small surplus of adults to sell at local club auctions.

I want to save a few of the fry, but I am not actively trying to breed them. I just really like swordtails and the pet store has seem to come across a bad batch and I dont want to buy them there. I figure at least if I know where they came from I can keep them alot healthier. I pretty much do let them breed at will as I do not want to separate the female from the other fish. The fish have never shown agression to each other and I think if might stress the female out to separate her to prevent breeding.

 

[OldMan47]

Fish that you have bred at home almost always will do better than the ones at the LFS. The fish shops, in general, are not breeders, they are intermediaries between the breeder and the retail customers. As such they deal mostly with fish that have traveled half way around the world to end up in your neighborhood. The long range shipping is hard on the fish and a percentage of all shipments are lost during the first few days after arrival. If you buy them during those first days, the losses will happen in your own tanks. Whenever I can I buy from other local breeders or breed my own replacements. That way my fish are almost always robustly healthy since they have not spent days or even weeks traveling the world.

 

[Dieses Madchen]

Fish that you have bred at home almost always will do better than the ones at the LFS. The fish shops, in general, are not breeders, they are intermediaries between the breeder and the retail customers. As such they deal mostly with fish that have traveled half way around the world to end up in your neighborhood. The long range shipping is hard on the fish and a percentage of all shipments are lost during the first few days after arrival. If you buy them during those first days, the losses will happen in your own tanks. Whenever I can I buy from other local breeders or breed my own replacements. That way my fish are almost always robustly healthy since they have not spent days or even weeks traveling the world.

My fish are doing really well as well. They are happy, friendly. All of them come to the glass to greet me. I never kept fish growing up, cause I thought a pett was supposed to cuddle, and fish can't do that lol. Now that I have them, I think that they are so relaxing. My onr surviving fry is flourishing, He looks more like a platy at this point, and he is a wag like his mom, but he is orange like one of my male swords, rather that being yellow like the mom. But yes, when i went to the petstore last, I was going to get some tetras, and I bailed cause thye had dead fish floating in the majority of their tanks.

 

[OldMan47]

Even the best of your LFS will have some fish die in their tanks after every shipment arrives. There is little excuse for a LFS having dead fish floating in their tanks. Although they can expect some losses due to shipping stresses, they should really stay on top of their maintenance and remove any dead fish as soon as they can can spot them. Decaying fish in a tank cause a build of ammonia and invite disease to spread through the tank.

 

[Dieses Madchen]

Even the best of your LFS will have some fish die in their tanks after every shipment arrives. There is little excuse for a LFS having dead fish floating in their tanks. Although they can expect some losses due to shipping stresses, they should really stay on top of their maintenance and remove any dead fish as soon as they can can spot them. Decaying fish in a tank cause a build of ammonia and invite disease to spread through the tank.

That's why I didn't buy any from them. They had at least 7 tanks with some dead fish belly up at the top of the tank. One of those poor dead ones had been in there quite some time. This pet store also told me that fishless cycles do not work and will only leave me having endless problems in my tank. Told me the the only ammonia that builds up that good basteria comes from the waste of the fish, so a cycle can only be done correctly with fish in the tank. I told her she was an idiot and that she has lost my business

 

[OldMan47]

Your LFS is half right and a bit out of date. The fishless cycle that we advocate is not something that was well known before the internet became so common a few short years ago, so a shop that has been operating for some time may not have heard of it. Day to day running of a pet shop can easily consume much of their available time. Many of us, including me, did most of our cycles using live fish in earlier years and it is still probably the most common method. I would think it was better to educate that person by printing off the instructions for a fishless cycle than to simply insult them.

 

[Dieses Madchen]

Your LFS is half right and a bit out of date. The fishless cycle that we advocate is not something that was well known before the internet became so common a few short years ago, so a shop that has been operating for some time may not have heard of it. Day to day running of a pet shop can easily consume much of their available time. Many of us, including me, did most of our cycles using live fish in earlier years and it is still probably the most common method. I would think it was better to educate that person by printing off the instructions for a fishless cycle than to simply insult them.

I did explain to her how it was done. She said that using ammonia rather than fish is not natural and a surefire way of messing up the tank. She had told me it can't be done without fish, and when I explained to her the process, she said it shouldn't be done that way.