My platys have me confused!!

[Pamela_S.]

Sorry, this is a little long....

Some background info:
I have 2 sunburst platys in my tank that I have had for about a month now. A day after I brought them home, I found 2 baby fry in the tank (which I bought a floating breeder for), about a week and half later or so, I wake up to find and catch 5 more baby fry and I put them into the breeder also. So at this point I am thinking that I had bought 2 pregnant platys. Well, what gets me really confused is that one of them looks to be pregnant again, she is really fat and has a number of little dots in her tummy that I read could possibly be the eyes of the baby fry inside of her. These do seem to change position, if I were to look in the morning, the little dots won't be in the same place later. If I could get a good pic of it I would take one and post it, but my camera is really terrible with closeups (or maybe it's just me....:ezpi_wink1: ) but more than likely it wouldn't capture the little dots anyway.

So this has all left me wondering..... is there any other way to tell the sex of a platy besides looking at the shape of the anal fin? One of them (the one that is not pregnant looking) does have a much darker orange coloring to it, especially around the base of the tail... could this possibly signify a male, even if the anal fin doesn't? I read that platys are pregnant for about a month before giving birth, but I did have 2 sets of fry already about a week and a half to 2 weeks apart of each other... Can they retain sperm and become pregnant twice from one mating? Or possibly not have their babies all at one time but a week or so apart? Or is there anything else that could possibly cause a platy to look like she could possibly be pregnant, with the little eye looking things in her tummy and all?? Sorry about all the newbie type questions, I am just completely unsure right now... thanks!!

[cocoa_pleco]

females are usually broader, and males are slimmer. the can retain sperm for a few months i believe

[sPuD]

Platies don't always have all their fry at once, particuarlly yonger platies. They can have a couple of platies every hour or even every day. Check oput this thread, they had a similar thing with their platies . . .
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It pretty much says that they will have there fry in small groups. But hope it helps anyway

[funnyfish]

I am having the same problem lol

[Sasquatch]

They were probably pregnant when you bought them and platies can store sperm for as many as 6 pregnancies I beleive.

As for sexing, the gonopodium on the anal fin is the most reliable way, but females have the gravid spot (the dark region behind the abdomen) and are generally larger and fatter.

[jonruthy]

Our platies seem to have 3 or 4 fry then sometime a few more the next day or could be upto 2 weeks after they drop a few more, we had 3 fry from our platies 2 weeks ago and no more since but she is still very much pregnant!!
We keep a floating plant in our main tank for fry to escape when born then fish them out as we see them, put them in a 60L fry only tank.

Congrates on the new fry.:thumb:
Jonruthy xx

[graycurse]

I've found that if I have gravel in my tank, when the mom gives birth often the babies will go hide under rocks for a few days and then come up. whenever I notice a birth has taken place, I usually take the larger fish out of the tank or put them in a net for a few mins, check in the plants and under decorations, and look very closely at the gravel along the glass. I usually find about 90% of the babies there. Maybe yours just had one batch and the babies hid for a few days

[Pamela_S.]

Thanks for the responses everyone!! :thumb:


So the one I thought was pregnant, definitely was as she dropped about 20 fry last night (the first ones showed up not ten minutes after starting this thread...LOL). Right now the majority of them are in my floating breeder, but luckily I had set up a second tank a couple of weeks ago so I will tweak that a bit and use it as a fry tank instead. The parameters in there are just about right, so I should be able to move the fry into the tank hopefully by next week. And luckily my fave LFS will take them in when they get a bit bigger. I really didn't expect to have this many fry from them, but if they can retain sperm for periods of time, then they are both females. This is interesting to know, although I wonder how many more fry I am going to get before they are done??? I am going to have to keep a closer eye on the other one now too for awhile. I still can't get over how cute the babies are!!