a few questions...

[TechNaturalist]

I recently placed 3 red wag platys in a 28 gallon I have with assorted tetra. One of the new platys is male and the other two are female. I intend to breed them at some point, but maybe not for a while, what, if anything can I do to somewhat delay their breeding? Secondly, I have another tank with 5 guppies in it. They started to exhibit a bit of strange behavior followed by swimming around the surface as close to the water line as they could get, their fins sometimes breaking the surface. I let the room get particularly hot, maybe 6 degrees more than usual and was wondering if they were just too hot and trying to cool off or if it was something more serious to worry about?

[Holyvision]

I recently placed 3 red wag platys in a 28 gallon I have with assorted tetra. One of the new platys is male and the other two are female. I intend to breed them at some point, but maybe not for a while, what, if anything can I do to somewhat delay their breeding? Secondly, I have another tank with 5 guppies in it. They started to exhibit a bit of strange behavior followed by swimming around the surface as close to the water line as they could get, their fins sometimes breaking the surface. I let the room get particularly hot, maybe 6 degrees more than usual and was wondering if they were just too hot and trying to cool off or if it was something more serious to worry about?

As for the breeding, the best thing is to separate the male from the females, they are live bearers so, without that, they breed very similarly to rabbits.

As for the guppies, you may want to put an air stone in the tank and see if that helps -- usually if fish hug the top like that, they are gasping for air because there isn't enough O2 in the tank for them. As for the temperature, you should get a heater, and set the temperature on it to whatever the hottest your tank gets during the day, temperature fluctuations are much more dangerous that a warm temperature, as the rapid changes can cause serious illness (like ich and others) as well as death from extreme stress! So for example, if your tank is 75 degrees normally, but in the heat of the day it gets up to 80 degrees, then just set your heater to 80 degrees to maintain a constant temperature. Best ways to cool a tank are to install fans in your canopy (see my photo bucket for an example) or to buy a chiller, which is expensive and requires a lot of space.

[Red]

1. I would get a south american bumble bee cat he will eat the babies...
2. Maybe try to put some kind of aeroter in there (bubble wand air stone)..

[Mvjnz]

The female platies will already be pregnant if they've been kept with males. Even if you seperate them from the males now they can have 3-4 batches of babies because they store sperm.

[TechNaturalist]

what size of air stone should I get and how often must I change it? (its a 50 gallon) I'm considering putting the females in their own tank if they are probably already pregnant.

[Red]

I would by one of the square ones that are black (sorry so vague) i have best of luck and you have to get a air pump...
buts thats only for the guppy tank because there near the top..

[Holyvision]

I would by one of the square ones that are black (sorry so vague) i have best of luck and you have to get a air pump...
buts thats only for the guppy tank because there near the top..

I recommend looking at the ARIO aerator systems, they are what I use and have a pump built in, and you bury them in the substrate:

[Only Registered Users Can See Links.]

[TechNaturalist]

I looked them up, pretty nifty. My 50 gallon with guppies is running a penguin 350 filter, the water level is so it splashes a decent amount and causes a fair amount of tiny bubbles in the water, is that still not enough o2? and even if its close to enough circulation, would the bubbler help my overall fish health?

[Holyvision]

I looked them up, pretty nifty. My 50 gallon with guppies is running a penguin 350 filter, the water level is so it splashes a decent amount and causes a fair amount of tiny bubbles in the water, is that still not enough o2? and even if its close to enough circulation, would the bubbler help my overall fish health?

Extra O2 can't be a bad thing. (unless your talking about Co2 injection and too much O2 pushing out the Co2...etc etc...that's another topic)

[TechNaturalist]

I ended up settling on an out-of-tank air pump that was rated to run a 60 gallon. Its a "topfin" brand, as they run pretty cheap but get the work done. I bought a 4 inch ceramic air stone, some tubing, a t valve and some suction cups and spent about a half hour setting it all up and making it look neat and such. The stone is vertically placed along the back glass toward the middle(ish) part of the tank a few cm from the gravel to try and allow maximum air into the tank and has been running about a day and a half or more now. I noticed the guppies are still swimming around the surface, though not breathing quite as hard, and arn't up there all the time, but I'm still wondering if its still a lack (or surplus) of something in the water. I also have tetra in the tank that are doing just fine and a dwarf gourami that is also fine. Is it just in the guppies' behavior to swim around the surface and hang out there? Or is it still an o2 problem?