pregnant platy

Question
Hi April. I have a 46 gallon planted aquarium. I have 8 Platies and one of my females has appeared to be pregnant for well over a month now. This is my first pregnant Platy and I'm not sure how long their gestation periods last. I noticed two days ago that two little Platy fry were swimming around in the plants suddenly but she still looks like shes going to pop. Is she going to continue birthing fry? If not I'm worried that she may have some kind of gut infection. She eats a LOT and sometimes appears to be pooping a whitish dental floss looking poop. Besides her looking obese she looks and acts healthy. My water parameters are good (0 ammonia, 0 nitrites) and I do weekly water changes of 30% to keep my nitrates down.

  Also I have 8 Platies, 10 Danios, 6 Corydoras, 3 dwarf Bristlenose Plecostomus, 1 Gold Gourami, 1 Golden Wonder Killie, 1 Blue White Fin Shark, 1 Golden Dojo Loach, 2 Hatchets, 3 Blood Fin Tetras and 4 Serpae Tetras. I was wondering if I would still have room for either another Dojo Loach or a trio of Kuhli Loaches or both? Thank you for your time.

Answer
Hi Mike,

You are pretty overstocked in your 46 gallon tank.  You really need about a 75-90 gallon tank for all of the fish that you have now.  Ammonia and nitrites should be 0, nitrates 5-20 ppm.  However, a 46 gallon tank cannot indefinitely support the bioload of all of these fish, especially as they grow.  Besides that you have some species that are definitely schooling fish that are not currently in a school and before you know it they will wither away and die without the security of a school of their own species.  Your danios and cories are fine, as they have 6+ but you need to beef up your schools of hatchets, bloodfins and serpaes, and especially the serpaes because they will fin nip tank mates to death.  I usually don't recommend keeping these unless you can keep 8-12.

The gestation for platies is about 28-30 days.  They will grow large in the abdomen and look as if they are about to explode and finally they will 'square off' in appearance from the side and when they do this they typically deliver in 1-3 days.  They will continue to deliver about every 28-30 days, about 10-80 fry at a time, depending on how old the mother is.  They deliver all at once and immediately deflate in appearance.  If you see some free swimming she was not the platy that delivered.

If she hasn't delivered after 40 days she may have an internal infection.  However, without having any other symptoms besides being bloated it's hard to tell what exactly it is.  You can try secluding her in a separate hospital tank of about 10 gallons with a cheapy hang on filter and heater and see if that sparks her to deliver.  You can feed her anti-parasitic or anti-bacterial food and see if that has any effect and this won't harm the fry.  If she's acting normally she may just be a very large platy.  I have 6 platies, all female, in one of my tanks and one (Big Mama) is just especially larger than the other 5.

Good luck : ) April M.