not sure what is up with the Platy

[Gofastleft]

55 gallon new tank, cycled for a month. Been gradually adding fish. On Saturday the numbers were great with ammonia and trites at 0 and trates at 20. changed out 10 gallons of water. At that point we had:
5 glass cats, 6 black skirt tetra, 4 red platy, 4 lamp eyed tetra, 3 cory, 1 black molly, 1 dalmation molly

I take care of our tanks but I left town on Wed. morning and just returned late last night. My wife and son were feeding. On Friday morning my wife found 3 dead glass cats, Friday night she said the water was cloudy and looked yellow and Saturday night there was another dead glass cat. I checked the water when I got home and ammonia and trites are 0 and trates are at 20.

There is a "building" that the glass cats used to hide in all of the time. It looked last night like one of the platy was pregnant. She was really big. I have 1 male Platy and he was following her around everywhere last night, it looked like he was protecting her, would not let any other fish get near her chasing any that got near.

This morning both the pregnant and male Platy were in the "building" hiding. They came out later and the female does not look as big now. I have not seen any Fry but they could be hiding in the "building" I guess.

Anyway, I was wondering with the way the Male was acting if he might have killed the Glass cats to clear the "building" for the female.

[Jaster]

Well I have a few platys (and mollys) and I've never seen the males protect them. They do chase them all over the tank but I'm pretty sure they have "other intentions". They don't care much about the fry either... they will eat them if they catch them (so will mom bty) livebearers are the dead beat moms and dads of the fish world...lol

I've also noticed that both the mollys and the platys got annoyed in small groups. (I had a bacteria issue that wiped them almost out on me) before I could get more in the tank they seemed more aggressive and aggravated. As soon as more of them were introduced to the tank they mellowed right out. So they might have been the reason but I don't think it was for the protection of the female. Maybe even because they were (if) annoyed it could have been a territory issue too. It's where they felt safe...

[Gofastleft]

Thanks, wasnt sure but the actions of the male were strange, and I was trying to figure out what happened to all of the glass cats at the same time. They probably are not related so not sure what happened to the cats.