PART 9: THE NEXT GENERATION ARRIVES!

The paradise was lost! But, it was not over. Nature was on my side. Two females out of my 4 Wagtail platies were pregnant when I brought them home. Their pregnancy was in an advanced stage. I was so curious to see the babies. It was an evening one month before the unfortunate happened to all my platies. I was at my study table. It was so refreshing to look intermittently at the fishbowl that housed my platies. The fishbowl, along with the fishbowl that housed my goldfishes, was placed on my table. Every time I looked at the fishbowl, a question flashed in my mind. When were the platy moms going to deliver their babies? I was so curious. I had never seen any fish giving birth to a baby-fish. I was kind of restless to witness that event. I was eagerly waiting for that special moment. I knew that it was really difficult to ascertain exactly when (date and time) the platy moms were going to deliver their babies. After some reading on the subject, I felt that the moment and the event were too far away. That made me still more restless and curious. I was not exactly looking at the fishbowl and suddenly, I felt as if something was dropped by a platy. I took a closer look and saw that it was a baby-platy delivered. Surprized and thrilled, I shouted aloud to inform my wife that one of our platies had delivered a baby. But, I did not know which one out of those two moms delivered that baby. Because, I did not see the baby coming out of its mother’s belly. The baby-platy tried to swim away and hide itself. However it was not quick enough to escape the jaws of the other platies that really liked a baby-platy snack. And, that unfortunate event happened and the baby vanished into the world of lost.

It was a real challenge. I did not have much time. I had two urgent tasks to do. I had to identify the mom that delivered the baby and to take that mom to a separate container where it would deliver its babies. A platy-mom usually gives birth to 5 to 35 babies in one go. She does that within a span of an hour or a couple of hours. I took a break from my book. And, I watched really carefully the two platy-moms. After about 5 minutes, I thought I had identified the one that delivered the baby. That one behaved a little differently and was restless. And, its birth canal was slightly more swollen compared to that of the other pregnant one. With the identification done, I had two more challenging tasks to perform. First, I needed to setup a separate container where the platy-mom was going to deliver its babies. Second, I was required to take that platy-mom out of the fishbowl as carefully and gently as possible. Pregnant platies get stresses so easily if an attempt is made to catch them and transport them to another place or container. When stressed, a pregnant platy may abort its babies. And, one in the process of delivering babies has a greater chance of getting stresses to death if appropriate care is not taken to catch and transport it. Many aquarists use a Breeder-Box (Breeding Box) to house a pregnant mom that is about to give birth to its babies. However, it is difficult to predict the exact date and time of delivery. So, usually, a pregnant platy-mom spends a couple of days in a Breeder-Box before it delivers it babies. Platies have a tendency to eat their own babies if the babies are not transferred to a separate container immediately after their birth. Breeder-Box, however, is stressful for a pregnant-platy. And, it was not a choice, of course, when it was about a fishbowl and not a fish-tank.

Quickly, I started working on preparing the container. It was a 4-Litre glass-jar. I used white aquarium pebbles (gravels) and a few artificial aquarium plants to design an arrangement. In that arrangement, there was a dedicated space for the platy-mom. There was a barrier that would not allow the mom to move to other areas in that container. The barrier however had tiny openings to allow the babies to escape through from the mom’s space to their hiding space. Their hiding space was built with pebbles and bushy artificial aquarium plants. Platy babies, just after their birth, are able to swim, hide themselves and move away from predators. That is the kind of inbuilt programming the platy-babies (Platy Fry!) are born with. It was about 12:00 AM and I was done with composing the container. Carefully, I transferred the platy-mom from the fishbowl to the composed container. It was stressed to an extent and was restless. I left some food for it in the container so that it would eat that when it would be hungry after giving birth to its babies. In that way, it would be less likely to eat the babies to satisfy its hunger. It was too late for me to wait for the event that was going to span over a couple of hours. My daughter Aditi found it all very interesting and expressed her reluctance to go to bed. I switched off the lights and went to bed. Aditi, too, fell asleep. I got up early and rushed to the container that housed the platy-mom.

The first thing I noticed was the swollen belly of the mom had gone flat. That indicated that it had released (delivered) its babies. Then I spotted a tiny platy-baby. I saw a few more hiding themselves in the bushy artificial plants and the pebbles. So, it was time to separate the mom and the babies. Carefully, again, I transferred the mom back to the fishbowl. I let the babies stay in that arrangement for a few more hours. Then, I took out the pebbles and plants out of the container. I was in a position to take a count. There were, believe it or not, more than 20 platy babies. They looked like tiny transparent pink mosquitos with relatively big pair of eyes! I was so excited to see the babies. Those babies were almost identical. Appearance wise, they had really minute variations which were apparent upon close verification. I served the babies some finely crushed fish-food. They took some time to identify that as food. Once they did so, they got started happily with their first meal. I changed the water partially to get rid of the small amount of mess created by the mom. Let me tell you, changing water was so huge a challenge. There was always a risk of losing a few babies with the outgoing water. I came up with a method. I used a thin transparent flexible hose to induce an outflow. And, I kept a close watch on the receiving end of the hose. If I noticed a baby sucked into the hose, I was ready to close the other end of the hose with my fingertip to stop the flow! And, then, I transferred the baby back to the container. In addition to this mechanism, I added one more layer of safety. I collected the water from the hose in a clean bucket. After the collection was over, each time, I used to check the water in the bucket for presence of platy-babies. In case I found one, I used to transfer that back to the container using a tea-cup. I had the choice of putting a fine net on the receiving end of the hose. But, I thought, that would be ineffective in cleaning the mess created by the babies. Well, it all went on fine and the babies did quite well in their new home. There was something interesting going to happen NEXT!

PART 9: THE NEXT GENERATION ARRIVES! by Debi Prasad Mahapatra is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.