questions on culling platies.

[csr mel]

i am starting to cull my fry now. i have about 40 of them, or atleast i had about 40 of them. i picked out 10 fry which were deformed and fed them to my catfish. some had bent bodies, some were just all scrunched up like an accordion.

now i am thinking of culling the runts. all the fry are 3 weeks old, and i can clearly see the runts. my problem is that alot of the runts have really great markings and would probably grow up to be beautifull fish. where as some of the normal fry are very bland and plain which i also dont like.
so is it a bad thing to keep the runts and the dull platies? i certainly have the space for them now, but i fear in a couple years all of the platies i will have will overcrowd the tank and i shall need to get rid of them. so i wonder if i should just keep the best of the best and feed the remaining fry to my catfishes?

if i did this it would leave me with about 10 fry.

 

[tstenback]

Normally when culling the idea is to keep those that best exhibit the qualities of the breed. But i often keep runts that are striking in color or just have a great attitude. The call is yours and it is often a difficult one but if strength of the breed is the goal then the runts have to go.

 

[kev]

Not breeding my self I can only give my opinion

how about leaving the first batch (as you have room) and see how there young turn out - If all the runts have Runt babies then you know there is little point in keeping them - However is it not possible that a runt could not give birth to a normal sized fish??