Multiple breed of platies ?

[tankbusterlover]

Hi,

I've bought my platies from 2 different pet stores. The last platy i bought a female Orange sunburst wag platy is huge. All the platies at that store were big.

my other platies i bought at a different pet store were Orange sunburst wag and also blue coral platies. Those one are quite smaller.

No matter how much i feed them they don't see to grow. I'm beginning to wonder if it's because of the way they were breed. Maybe the smaller ones are inbreed or something.

My regular zebra danios are growing and getting real big. They're bigger than what you usually see in pet store. What a beautiful fish now that they're grown. I have 5 and want to add 5 mores. They remind me of the minnow we use for ice fishing.

 

[Barbs and Barbels]

Not really sure why your platies don't seem to be growing. Could have been stunted from being crowded of poor conditions.

A lot of the danios take time to develop, My oldest giants now have a lot of white on their fins they didn't have when younger. By all means add more. They love company- the more the merrier!

 

[GamerChick5567]

Could just be the strain maybe? Or perhaps they didn't get too big while growing and were just outcompeted for food? Seen it happen.

 

[Coryloach]

Its possible they were not kept very well when fry which stunted their growth.
Platies grow all their lives though so it's probably early to tell for your smaller ones. By the time they reach about 4 years they get really big. Some people thought mine were mollies when they saw them at first.

These below were two of my quite old ones but they only got that size the last couple of years or so

 

[cichlidfish]

Platies don't get very big, like under 2" full grown. Hybrid livebarers never get as big as their wild type ancestors.

 

[Coryloach]

Platies don't get very big, like under 2" full grown. Hybrid livebarers never get as big as their wild type ancestors.

These two above were nearly 3 inches and you can see how fat too...poop machines. Unless you never keep platies alive for their full life span,they almost always outgrow 2 inches. These fish above died when nearly 5 years old.

 

[Coryloach]

By the way, to add to the above, I first noticed how big platies grow is when I moved a bunch of old adult females from my 30G tank at the time to a 100G tank. They started growing again rapidly and only then got massive. So although its an old myth that fish grow to the size of their tank, in this case it turned out to be true. I never again kept platies in a small tank. They also have very high bioload, poop more than a pleco if you have a group. The females are also very social with each other and stick together in a school so should not be kept alone or in pairs, and with more than one male to many females. The dominant male will chase away the subdominant to death or when there's just a few females, he stresses the females to death too. This could be because of hybridising with swordtails but that was the case with mine.

 

[cichlidfish]

These two above were nearly 3 inches and you can see how fat too...poop machines. Unless you never keep platies alive for their full life span,they almost always outgrow 2 inches. These fish above died when nearly 5 years old.

3" is pretty big. Maybe they have some swordtail in them.

 

[Coryloach]

Yes, they may have....who knows..The males were aggressive to each other, even in a 100G tank, especially with females around, so definitely some swordtail genes in them, unless platy males are as agressive by nature.

 

[Hendre]

I have 2 that I have had in various tanks for close to a year and they have barely grown, as well as a single remaining zebra danio.

I think inbreeding has something to do with it