# Platy gives mixed signals!



## mousey (Jan 18, 2005)

My 4 month old platies have grown up quite nicely but one is giving mixed signals.
It has a large gravid spot as well as a gonodopin! some days it spars with the other male in the tank and other days it is submissive allowing the male to mate with it.
I am wondering if it will have babies or if it will be sterile.
I guess time will tell.
This batch of fry it came from had its share of oddities - several fry were white with bug eyes-they all died. some grew for a couple of months then sank to the bottom of the tank and couldn't swim.the rest seem to be ok except this one with the mixed genitalia.


----------



## TheOldSalt (Jan 28, 2005)

Platies are sex-changers, so this isn't really an uncommon thing. It will almost certainly never give birth again, but it should turn out to be fertile as a male.


----------



## mousey (Jan 18, 2005)

I have had older female fish change when there has been no male in the tank but never just a young fish. This young one has never given birth either.


----------



## TheOldSalt (Jan 28, 2005)

Oh, okay.
Platies have 3 sex chromosomes instead of the usual two, and sometimes an undeveloped male will look like a female simply because the male gene hasn't yet activated. Such fish aren't considered to be fertile as "females" but are fully functional males.
In this case, the sex-change isn't a "normal" one of the type that many other fish species undergo.


----------



## mousey (Jan 18, 2005)

oddly enough another 2 of the fry that developed gonodopins have recently also developed gravid spots!
They are still confused! They are certainly full of hormones too- constantly harrassing each other to the point that the smallest male among them- who at this stage is just developing the gonodopin- lays on the bottom to prevent the others from trying to mate with him.
The "top" male is very aggressive and is constantly flaring at the other males.
I put his father in the tank with them and he is not afraid of his dad but chases him.
There has been only one female so far in the batch( the one who delivered just one fry) She is a very nasty tempered fish and today she killed a couple of fry that were about 1 month old.
Her dad and mother are both gentle fish so i don't know why these fry are so aggressive and gender screwed up.
They are from the same batch that had some albino fry with big bulging eyes- they all died.
Mom is a high fin platy so I am wondering if there is a screwed up genetic component going on here.
Also they are sure an example of fish giving off hormones to prevent the other fry from developing. I have these 5 who are sexually mature now and about 1 - 1 1/2 inches long and the rest of the batch that are 4 months old are still no more than 1/2 inch.
I have never seen this much confusion before in fry. my other batches all grew up evenly, relatively speaking.
the only thing I can think of is that they are damaged somehow because they had to be treated for flukes several times. perhaps the chemicals messed them up?


----------

