Platy is a tropical freshwater fish that belongs to the same group or family of fish (Peociliidae) similar to the swordtailBecause of that, both species can actually interbreed with each other if placed in the same aquarium fish tank. Platy exists in different colors from orange to red while some has a mix of yellow shades with some black speckles. Due to crossbreeding, nowadays there is even albino platy with red colored eyes.
Breeding platies are rather straight forward and most of the time, it will happen on its own without your intervention and provided that the living condition is at its best with good water quality and huge tank space area. A good practice to successfully breedthe fish is by outnumbering the males with females using ratio of 1 to 3, meaning that let’s say if you have 2 male platies, the number of females should be 6. This way, it will ensure that there is no in-fighting or occurrences whereby the male will chase the female platy until it become exhausted as this could be life-threatening to your pet fish.
A reliable method of determining whether you have a male and female platy is by looking at the anal fin. A female platy would have the fin fully opened while for male platy, the fin is closed to become a long straight pointy fin called gonopodium, which is used to inseminate the female fish. Pregnant female platy can be easily identified by looking at the size of the belly, which begins to darken at the area right above the anal fin.
Platies are live-bearers meaning that the fish doesn’t lay eggs and will release free swimming fry. Usually the pregnancy period can be anywhere between 3 to 4 weeks and during this period, the fry will actually consume the yolk sac and become fully developed in the womb of its mother. Platies are notorious for eating their own babies and in order to ensure that the fry have high survival rate, you can actually overcome this by setting up anaquarium tank full of plants and vegetation to provide a good hiding spot. Predation is a natural process but if you want to ensure that every single fry survive, you can use a fish breeding trap or hatchery which has a compartment to separate the fry.
Caring for platy fish fry can be extremely easy. By the time, they are born, the size is anywhere between aquarter to half cmand they are known to be an active swimmer. Once they are released into the water from their mother’s womb, they will immediately dash to a hiding spot and will swim away if there’s any movement of any object approaching them. These free-swimming fish fry will readily accept any food you feed to them.
You can either soak your normal fish food with water and then crushed it until it becomes diluted powder or you can use hard-boiled egg yolk. These days, there are even liquid fry foods, which you can buy from aquarium pet stores and all you have to do is to add a drop of the liquid into the water. Despite the availability, the recommended nutrition should still come from brine shrimp nauplii if you intend to provide the best for your pet. Finally if everything is well taken care of, the young fish fry should achieve full-grown size in about 4 and a half months to begin another cycle of breeding.
