PART 7: NEW MEMBERS ARRIVE!

I brought home 6 platies. I have a reason to like platies so much. Platies truly reflect and demonstrate all the magnificent colours of life. If you have platies in your aquarium, you easily get to see, birth, death, love, fight, passion, play, feast and more. Platies are live-bearers. They give birth to babies! A new generation comes into being. The babies grow to become adults and give birth to a new generation, if everything goes fine. That's a wonderful cycle to watch. Platies are playful and very active. So, they entertain the aquarist really well. They adapt to so many kinds of food. So, it is easy to feed them and keep them healthy. Adult platies make love so often. Male takes the initiative and tries to persuade the female into the act. He does not give up so easily and demonstrates absolute determination. Males fight over females. Platies are fierce fighters. However, generally, they are peaceful animals. As far as my knowledge goes, I know of no other aquarium fish that is available in so many colour-varieties. And, platies of different colours interbreed so easily. That leads to yet more colour-varieties and patterns. So, there is always an element of surprize when it comes to the coloration and pattern of the next generation! And, platies are not extremely delicate. They are relatively hardy. And, I really like that aspect about them. Unlike a goldfish, a platy is not really a huge fish for a 15-Liter fishbowl!

It was quite natural on my part to choose platies over other fishes. However, there was a difficulty. I visited a couple of Aquarium Shops and did not find platies. But, I was determined not to get back home without buying platies that evening. Eventually, I arrived at a store that had platies. Those were the famous Micky Mouse platies (Pink and Black). I was actually looking for Red Wagtail platies. I was disappointed but wanted to bring home a few of those platies that evening. And, I thought, 6 would be a good number. So, I requested the store-owner to get me 2 males and 4 females. That was approximately a good male-female ratio. However, the ideal composition would be 2 males for 6 females, in case of platies. However, I thought, 8 of those would be too big a number to start a new fishbowl with. Actually, 2 is the ideal number to start a new fishbowl of that size (15 Litres). But, I was reluctant to start with that small a number of fishes. I thought, with only two fishes, the fishbowl would look almost empty (no fish?)!

Based on my request, 6 Micky Mouse platies (2 males and 4 females) were packed for transportation. One female, out of those, I noticed was not a Micky Mouse platy. That was a plain Red platy and was bigger than the rest five. I was in a hurry and liked the red colour of that female. So, I brought home what was packed for me. Eventually, I came to know that the bigger female was not actually a Platy! It was a Swordtail! Swordtails are usually bigger than platies and are more aggressive. However, it is sometimes really difficult to distinguish between an adult female platy and a not-so-big female Swordtail. Well, I was not very happy about that mistake. The real composition was like this: 2 small male Mickey Mouse platies, 3 small female Mickey Mouse platies and a female Swordtail. That was truly a bad gender composition (ratio). Platies and swordtails may interbreed, sometimes. I wanted to rectify the error. I had two choices: 1. Reducing the male population 2. Increasing the female population. I wanted to go with the more challenging option. It was challenging, indeed. Because, a bigger population was going to result in a need for more maintenance, more frequent water changes and quick deterioration of water quality. I thought, everything was fair in love and war. I loved enjoying a fishbowl full of colourful and playful fishes. And, I was ready (well, almost ready) to pay the price!

After reaching home, I prepared the new fishbowl quickly for the new members of the league. I did not have many ornaments, plants and decorations in that new fishbowl. It was filled with untreated tap water fresh from my bathroom tap. Without much delay, I released the fishes into the bowl. The fishes were a little restless in their new home and in a new type of water. After a few hours, I got them their first meal at my home. Based on my decision to change the male-female ratio by adding more fishes, I went shopping over the weekend. I brought 3 females (2 Red Wagtail, 1 Orange | Sunburst Wagtail) and a young and strong male (Red Wagtail with black dots on its body) platy. The journey from the store to my home was long for these four platies. Two of the females were pregnant when I brought them home. I released those four into the platy bowl. The new members were a bit restless in their new home and the existing inhabitants were, also, a little restless to see new members in their home. These new platies were bigger than the Micky Mouse platies. The Swordtail was the longest among all. So, it was a new 10 member team to run the show! The story was going to take an interesting turn NEXT!

PART 7: NEW MEMBERS ARRIVE! by Debi Prasad Mahapatra is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.