Need Info On Platies

I was wondering if there is a link or post here where I can read up on platies? A friend of mine, who normally keeps goldies, rescued 7 platies from a lady and she knows nothing about them, other than they are livebearers and she thinks 4 of them are female and are getting really fat. I can't help her as I am not very familiar with trops. Right now, she has them in a 10g with a ghost shrimp and some snails (which are for the puffer, which she also rescued). She sent me a list with a bunch of questions on it that I need to find answers for. Thanks so much!!!

Have a few platys some are in the jungle tank, others are in tanks with just some fake plants for fry cover. Temps 78 - 80 just dependant on what tank. In the summer a few live in the water trough where I keep a heater for backup on 76F and big old fashion box filter.

Food they'll eat just about anything but mine get cichlid frenzy flake, earthworm flake, variety of frozen foods (just depends what I have) and when I remember to pick up live they get blackworms, daphnia or whatever else I come across.

Females have a "rounded pectral fin" males will be "pointed".

Salt in the water, some people choose to do so personally do not.

Thanks! Here are the questions she asked, if someone can help me out on them:

So my questions are:

How do you know if they are pregnant? There are 4, I think are females, that are getting really REALLY fat. I have read that these are live bearing fish and there was a picture of a pregnant female but mine are much rounder. They look like they are going to blow up! They were all quite thin when I came into possession so I was feeding heavy. Thought they were just putting on weight but the males now are thickened up like my betta, as is one of the others, but these other four just keep getting bigger and bigger!

How long does it take from getting pregnant to having babies?

How can you tell ~or can you tell ~ when they are going to have their babies? I read something about being able to see the eyes of the babies in some spot ???? Not sure at all what they were talking about.

Do I need to remove the females when they have their young or can they just have them in the tank with the rest of the fish? Remove the babies?

How many babies do they have?

What do I feed the babies?

Is there anything I need to do for the babies differently than what I do for the rest of them?

How old before I can rehome them? (Yeah like any animal or fish that comes into my house ever leaves again!)

How many gallons per fish should they have? Tropical fish so 1 gallon per inch of fish? More?

This is a good page hopefully it can answer most of your questions

http://www.fishlore.com/Profiles-Platy.htm

Platys are pretty hardy fish not much care needed then normal basic aquarium care :)

platies store sperm so females are always pregnant. Just have enough plant cove and some of the babies may survive. I've had platies give up to 50 fry at a time usually about 25 on the avg. Platies will eat there own young so if you want to save as many as possible remove the fry or use a breeding trap and fry saver. 10gal will fill quickly if you save the fry.

Thanks so much!!!!

Two more questions: How long before the females have the babies after they get pregnant, is there a time frame she should know about? Also, if she takes the males out, can the females become egg-bound?

SeaWitch wrote:

Two more questions: How long before the females have the babies after they get pregnant, is there a time frame she should know about? Also, if she takes the males out, can the females become egg-bound?

I don't know how long gestation is, but I have read that they can store gametes, and get pregnant later when no males are present, so I doubt she should worry about them becoming egg bound.

they have babies every 3-4 weeks :) and no you dont have to worry about egg bound. They store sperm on average for 3-4 months, i read on one website that sometiems they can store up to 11 mo. I dont think ive ever heard of a platy being eggbound acctually...

Oh wow, your friend sounds like me when I discovered my first fry (8) in my "sons" fish tank. We have a 40 gal and since those first 8 I now have about 40 ranging in age from 3 months to just a week old. I don't bother the fish too much we have Mexican river rock which are about a inch and a half to two inches long so it creates a lot of nooks for them to hide in and that's how they have survived for me. I have a basic heater filter that came with the tank I keep the heater at about 78-80 degrees. I only had 3 fake plants in there before but have now endeavored into real plants.
What the other posts said is pretty accurate for my platties they have there fry about 5 weeks apart and they get so ridiculously huge its nuts. Good luck

Thanks so much!!! I really appreciate this and I know my friend does, too!!!