Platy

The Platy is a popular beginner fish, since it is relatively sturdy, easy to care for and also easy to spawn in captivity. It will not grow larger than 2.5 inches and a single Platy can be kept in a 5 gallon aquarium. You can choose from many different Platy variants, including the common red Wagtail Platy.
Other popular variants are Sunset Platy, Variatus Platy and Tuxedo Platy. Your Platy will do best if kept in water that is slightly alkaline. It will probably survive on a diet consisting of nothing but flake food, but it will do much better if you supplement the flake food with live or frozen foods. A varied diet ensures that your Platy receives all necessary nutrients to stay strong and healthy. The colours of the Platy can also turn dull from an insufficient diet.

If you want to breed Platy one of the best ways is to buy 2-3 female Platy that are really fat. A fat female Platy are most likely pregnant and you can expect offspring within a month. You can see which Platy are female and which Platy are male by looking at their gonopodium. A gonopodium is the anal fin, or more precisely the anterior portion of the anal fin, that has turned into a copulatory organ.

Both male and female fish can display a large gonopodium, but a male Platy will display a gonopodium that is elongated and much larger than that of a female gonopodium. Sperm is transferred from the male Platy to the female Platy via his gonopodium.                               Your female Platy will become more and more swollen as the birthday comes closer, and it is not unusual for female Platies to look almost like small, square cubes.



Feed her a lot of live food in addition to flake food, since live food makes the fry bigger and healthier, while high quality flake food is an excellent base. It is very important that you keep the aquarium clean and remove as much solvable waste as possible. Water changes of approximately 25% should be performed once a week, preferably even more frequent.