Livebearers:
Platy (Xiphophorus maculatus) 
ORIGIN: Central America.
TEMPERAMENT: Peaceful. Mostly used in community tanks. Excellent for
people new to Tropical Fish.
CARE: Feed with tubifex worms and live foods. Some aquarium salt in the
water will prevent fish deseases from entering your aquarium. Easy to
breed and look after.
WATER CONDITIONS: pH 7.0 - 7.5 and a temperature of 25 - 28*C (77 -
82*F)
GENDER: The gender can be easily told by the male's anal fin
(gonopodium). Females grow bigger and have a rounded body.
BREEDING: Platys are very prolific breeders. Plants are an advantage to the baby
Platys, as they can hide from the parents that may eat their fry.
Breeding livebearers is easy, so you only have to wait a while to get
young in your tank. The babies should be removed from their birth tank
as soon as they are born and placed into a separate tank to be certain
they survive. The parents are not as carnivorous as other live bearers
so dont be too worried if the babies are not hiding.
Most of the aquiarium strain platies are
already mutts crossed many times with other species. The 3 main species
used are Xiphophorus maculatus, X. variatus, and X. helleri. Most all of
the Xiphophorus genus can interbreedn The different types of platys are
mickey mouse, sunset, sunburst, red wag, orange moon, redtail black
variatus, sunset variatus, marigold variatus, strawberry hiffin, blue
coral moon, yellow calico, and many others. The platy is a peaceful,
hardy fish and was my first fish. They can even breed with
swordtails and maybe some other possible livebearers.
COMMENTS ON THE PLATY:Platys are livebearers and they are very easy to
breed. For good babies breed your best looking Platys. I have heard that
they can breed with Swordtails but haven't tried this yet. They are very
active and nice to look at. There are large numbers of colour strains of the Platy. In some
cases the body and fins are single colour; in other the body is
unicolour.
Xiphophorus maculatus (Platy)
Class: Actinopterygii (ray-finned fishes)
Order: Cyprinodontiformes (killifishes, rivulines, topminnows,
guppies, mosquitofishes, splitfins, pupfishes)
Family: Poeciliidae
Scientific Name: Xiphophorus maculatus
Other Scientific Name(s): Poecilia maculata, Platypoecilus
maculatus, Poecilia maculatus, Platypoecilus nigra,
Platypoecilus pulchra, Platypoecilus rubra, Platypoecilus
aurata, Platypoecilus cyanellus, Platypoecilus maculatus aurata,
Platypoecilus maculatus cyanellus, Platypoecilus maculatus
sanguinea, Platypoecilus sanguinea
Common Name: Platy
Other Common Names: Southern platyfish
Distribution: Asia: Mekong, Chao Phraya and Xe Bangfai basins;
also from the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra and Borneo.
Diet:
Temperament: Community fish - very little to no aggression.
Males will harass females is kept singly together, so at least
two females per male is recommended.
Sexing:
Breeding: If you have a male and a female platy in the same
tank, they have probably already bred. The female can have up to
6 batches of fry from one fertilization, about 34-40 days apart.
Once pregnant, the female's abdomen will grow with the size of
the babies inside, and a dark spot is noted at the anus (the
gravid spot). This spot is actually the eyes of the fry showing
through the mother's scales from the inside. She will hang out
near hiding places for the new fry at birthing time, often
sitting on the bottom near some plants. The young can eat
finely-powdered flake food. Platies can interbreed with
swordatils.
Species Stats
Min. Tank Size: 10 gallons
Temperature: 68-78 °F
pH: 7-8
Max Size: 3 inches
What Should I Know About Keeping
Platies?
There are two common types of these livebearers: the brightly colored
maculatus platy (the tuxedo, micky mouse, wags and such) reaches a size
of about 2 inches and is usually not an aggressive fish. The variatus
platy doesn't have as many color forms as the maculatus does, but it
does come in some spectacular long-finned varieties. The recently
available high finned varieties do tend to be a little more sensitive to
water quality and also seem to be a little more desease prone. We have
found that larger tanks and frequent water changes seem to mitigatet
these situations.
Don't keep platies in anything smaller than a 10g tank. They are an
active fish and don't do all that well in small tanks. If you can afford
the space, a 20g would be better.
Swordtails will eat commercial flake foods and live foods. We feed our
breeding stocks blackworms, grindal worms and fruitflies in addition to
flakes. They also need to have some vegetable matter in their diet, so
we add biweekly feedings of Spirulina based flakes. We also encourage
algae on the sides and the back of the tank. The fish graze on the algae
giving them a good source of plant material.
They are very adaptable to different temperatures, from the low 70s to
the low 80s. We keep our tanks at about 75 F. The Ph of our system water
is nuetral. Our water has a TDS of 110 ppm.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
