Aquarium Pets – Platies

Mickey mouse platy.

I have been in the aquarium hobby since I was a kid. There were lots of dead fish throughout my involvement with the hobby; but all that is another story altogether. We’ll get to that some other day. Platies are one of my favorites when it came to aquarium fishes. They have an assortment of different colors to choose from, from black to yellow, red, orange and even dark blue. Not only that they also vary in color distribution. Some of them have patterns that look like Mickey Mouse on their tails. The best thing about these beauties? They breed like there’s no tomorrow, which is also the downside of having them.

Here’s a little info about Platies. Platies prefer harder water and are quite tolerant towards polluted water so they are one of the best first fishes to introduce to a newly set up aquarium to mature the system after the nitrate peak has been passed. They love plants, they use them as cover or hiding places. Platies also love plants because they love munching on them. Soft leafy plants are usually eaten regularly so beware. They also enjoy the presence of algae in the aquarium; in fact they can’t live without them. They prefer the soft green type that grows when you have good water. This can be used to our advantage as they will help to devour algal blooms in new aquariums. Even though they love greens doesn’t mean they only need that. Feed them live or frozen foods regularly plus a good quality flake food as the basis of their diet.

This one is pretty!

Let’s get to the breeding part. These fishes are livebearers. This means they have babies instead of laying eggs. In livebearer males, the anal fin has been developed into a gonopodium, a sexual organ formed by the fusion of the third, fourth and fifth rays of the fin. At its tip there are various spines and hooks which are often called “holdfasts”, and which are used by the male to hold on to the females during mating. At this time, the gonopodium is directed forwards and a groove formed down which the sperm is channeled to the cloaca of the female.

The baby fishes that come out from their mummy’s tummy are ready to fend for themselves. They usually disappear in thickets of plant growth right after they are released. Broods vary from 20 to 40 most of the time. Platy females are capable of storing sperm so many successive broods can be produced from a single mating.

This looks exactly like mine.

Platies are gentle and don’t bother to chase other fishes around. Males might chase each other around sometimes. Males will chase after females because of their mating behavior and might cause the females to die of fatigue. To avoid this, have at least 3 females for 1 male. That way they won’t be too tired from all the chasing from the overly heighten sex drive of the male fish. You can keep them with other community fishes that have mouths that aren’t big enough to fit a platy in it.

This is a baby platy.

These fishes breed a lot! You may start out with 4 and end up with tons more the next 3 months. Here is a tip on how to control population. One of the ways is to not provide too many hiding places, if you have lots of plants; the chances are higher for the babies to survive. Next is to keep them with fished that love baby fishes, I keep mine with an angel fish, my angel just loves to swallow these babies full. If this is too cannibalistic for you, you might want to try keeping only females. If you chose to do so, make sure that the females fishes you buy aren’t already impregnated in the aquarium store. This was what happened to mine. I only wanted two females since I didn’t want them to breed. Turned out that they were actually pregnant and I ended up with overstock problems. I solved it by giving almost all my platy fishes away and remained some in my aquarium. I also bought an angel fish to keep the population in check.

So there goes my article on these beautiful pet fish. I hope you have a great experience with these fishes just as the way I did.