# Pregnant Platty Question Help!



## mandii_love91 (Mar 14, 2009)

My Platty Is Pregnant She Had 6 Fry about 4 or 5 Days Ago And Still Looks Pregnant And Still Has Some Small Black Spots In Her Tummy..I Have No Idea What Is Going On And If She Is Still Pregnant....Can Some1 Help Me Please?? 
**Thanks**
~AmandA~


----------



## elvis332 (Dec 29, 2007)

All About Fry!
So. You have a pregnant livebearer. Let's say she is a guppy (as all common lievbearers have pretty much the same pregnancy regime) and she's been in your tank for just over 3 weeks with a male guppy too. The chances are that she got mated with in the first couple of days of arrival as guppies have very high sex drives and it is very likely she would have done so.
During her pregnancy you may have noticed various changes in her behavior in the 3 weeks she's been pregnant, to begin with in the first week there aren't many changes. Perhaps she gets harrassed by the male a little more and she becomes a bit more intolerant of other fish.

In the second week you will notice an increased appetite, the first signs of the gravid spot and a slight increase in weight; the "gravid spot" is a dark patch seen and located towards the back of the pregnant females tummy and appears as a dark/black spot. This spot is actually the frys' eyes you are seeing which as they develop, become darker and darker and take the appearance of the gravid spot on the outside of the pregnant fish at the back of tummy where the skin is thinner.
Many people use this "gravid spot" to indentify whether a fish is pregnant or not although not all livebearers show this depending on their color.

In the 3rd week the gravid spot will have become very dark and her tummy will look so pregnant like it is going to pop. Her appetite will have increased more and she will be more competitive with other fish for food and intolerant of them; she will be spending more and more time by herself around planted areas in the tank or where ever there are hiding places available. She can give birth in the 3rd week if she is expecting just a few fry but most guppys take about 4 weeks; mollys and swordtails can take up to 2-3 months if they are expecting a large amount of fry.
Common livebearers can produce anywhere between 5 and 100 fry although for the most part they don't exceed 20. You will generally find the larger batchs of fry coming from mollys and swordtails (i.e 50+ fry) due to their larger size and pregnancy times in comparison to platies and guppies.

The 4th week you should be expect the fry although the pregnant guppy can take up to 5 weeks if she's expecting many fry or she doesn't feel water conditions are good enough for her (livebearers can hold onto fry if they feel their enviromental conditions aren't suitable. Also if they have unfertilized in them for periods of time they may abort them or somtimes eat them for nutrition.). She can also abort the fry if she experiences alot of enviromental stress or doesn't get enough food/nutrition.
There isn't much you can do to ensure she gives birth except raise tank temp (it is advised you don't raise it higher then 26 C), and feed her a varied nutirious diet and keep water quality conditions top notch to help encourage her.
The fry birth process can take up to a day or more and she may even just give birth to a few fry and then deliver the rest a week later. During this time it is best not to disturb her and many people move their pregnant livebearers to a breeding tank or net/trap a couple of days before she is expected to give birth so she isn't harrassed by other fish.

When the fry are born they may not eat for up to 2 days although it is best you start feeding them from day one as this varies alot with fry and they can eat anywhere between this time and day one.
Some fry never get to grips with this new world; in some cases their lungs/swim bladders do not fill up with enough air when they are born thus causing them to have swimming problems and they appear to hug the bottom of the tank all the time- these fry are often called belly-huggers and should be put down ASAP as they never live long and find difficulty from eating and often suffer swim bladder disorders.

The best place to raise your fry is a spare "fry tank" although breeding nets are acceptable too if you don't have many(20-) although even so they will soon outgrow the breeding net. We will talk about both here...

Fry tanks;
A fry tank is simply a spare cycled tank with adequete heating and filtration and/or lighting and planting and either has no other fish in it or fish that do not eat fry( i.e panda corys). I would say the advised size fry tank is 10 gallons although if you can get bigger, the bigger the better (although i wouldn't suggest more than 30 gals as it will become very difficult to monitor how many fry there are or retrieve and dead ones/spot unwell ones).
Fry tanks are better than breeding nets especially because they can offer more space for the fry and people have said that there are much higher survival rates in large batchs of fry.
My only concern with fry tanks is that the water stats should be as near as posible to the tank they came from as so to help prevent fry dying from stress/shock- it is not wise to move fry around too much especially in the 3 months old and younger stages of life.

Breeding nets;
Breeding nets are quite controversal and in the scenario of moving the pregnant fish before fry birth I think it depends more on the scenario the pregnant fish is in.
When a pregnant fish gives birth she releases scents into the water which other fish will/may smell and harrass her to either:
A. Make her lose her guard and deliver the fry in an unprotected area of the tank so that they can eat them as she gives birth to them, or
B. So she dies and they can munch on her dead body.

Not all fish do this but there are some fish with a bigger tendancy to do so than others; if you have a pregnant guppy in the tank with tiger barbs for example, the tiger barbs will almost certainly harrass the mother and eat as many fry as they can.
Not only will you be likely to lose alot of fry from this but also the pregnant fish could die from stress, so in this case I think it advised she is separated from the tiger barbs before she delivers the fry.
On the other hand it is only advised you put guppy or platy sized fish in breeding nets and only one per net, if the fish is bigger than a guppy/platy the stress from the net usually outweighs giving birth in the main tank.
You should aim to only have her in the net for a maximum of 4 days, after that release her back into the main tank.

Setting up the breeding net; when you set up the net, try to put it where it isn't directly under the tank lights (if you can't find anywhere, find somwhere to shade it) but still has a good flow/current from the filter.
Put a piece of plant in the net and rock to help weigh the net down (the plant will help make the pregnant fish feel less stressed and more at home).



Saving Fry:
Somtimes a livebearer can experience alot of difficulty during the fry birthing process and can die from the stress or fry stuck in her.
Here's what you can do to help try and save the fry in these situations;
A. The pregnant fish is having alot of birthing difficulties and is desperatly trying to expell a fry for hours (you will know because her tail will have become bent to one side and she will be hanging around a spot in the bottom of the tank) and you are positive she is going to die very soon.
I have heard what various people do in this situation is catch the pregnant female and very gently give her belly a very light sqeeze in order to help her expell it; apparently this can work.
B. The pregnant fish has suddenly died while trying to give birth; make sure you have somthing sharp like a razor blade at hand and cut her belly open and remove the fry and put them into water.
This can only be attempted with any success straight after she has died as the fry will die within minutes her death.
Survival rates vary alot from this and i wouldn't expect anymore than a 50% survival rate from this but it is still worth it I believe.

Raising Fry:
This is what I do when it comes to raising livebearer fry (ps: it is possible to feed them crushed fish flakes throughout their fryhood but this often leads to lower fry survival rates and poorer quality fry/feeding complications);
A. For the first 2 weeks I feed them Liquifry no.1 as this fry food is easy to eat for them and has nutrition in it suitable for this early stage of life- you can continue on this for a month if you like but some people report fry losses from feeding this in the long run as the frys' diet changes.
B. After the liquifry, i then move them onto TetraMinfry or "first bites" by Hikari as these powdered fry foods are very nutritious and although they can be fed throughrout the entire fish's life, they become unsuitable due to their powdered form and the frys literally growing mouth afte 4 months of age.
At 4 months I move them onto fish flakes of suitable size.
C. During the 6 month main growing stage of the frys' life, it is good to also feed them alternative foods like crushed freeze-dried tubifex/daphinia/bloodworm once every 4 days as these foods offer extra protein for the rapidly growing fry.

Most livebearers like platys and guppys take about 6 months to mature although mollies and swordtails can take up to a year+.

Sexing the fry; 
In the early stages it is near impossible to tell the frys' sexes apart for the first 3 months. From my observations though I noticed particually in guppy fry, the male fry grow faster than the females and are the first to get extra colors on them in places like their tails that they will have much more of in later life i.e colors like reds; metallic colors are the last to develop.
At around 5 months of age when the fry are showing clear signs of their sexuality, some appear to turn from female to male - that is because all fry appear female when very young and it is the males sexual organs the are some of the last things to develop and somtimes you can have late developers.
The fry will be able to breed themselves at 6 months of age but rarely any earlier than this.
You should start separating the genders as soon as the males begin to appear to prevent unecessary inbreeding and fighting/harrassment towards each other.

A picture of a female giving birth (thanks to bloozoo2)


----------



## tiffmedema (Mar 5, 2009)

Do you have the fish in a breeder box, a holding tank, the community tank or whatnot? because if you stressed it out it can hold the fish inside of it even after birth has begun. This might be the case. So there very well may be some fry left to deliver that she has not let go yet.


----------



## elvis332 (Dec 29, 2007)

she wont drop the fry all at one she can doi it today then next week etc......
if she gets to stressed she will abort


----------



## Guest (Mar 28, 2009)

Mandii,

platys will look prego even after they drop thier fry and can have upto 3 batchs of fry with out needing to mate. they have the ability to store sperm and fertilize the eggs. platys can have batched every 30 to 45 days. its quite ok if she looks prego.

hope this helps!

Cheers!


----------

