My vision of an aquarium chocked full of guppies has yet to materialize. Three pairs of guppies couldn’t keep up with two extremely prolific platy females. I’ve been trying to remove unwanted platies for months.

Ridding the tank of platies has been surprisingly difficult. The smaller they are, the harder they are to catch–even after emptying the tank of everything but the gravel. Nabbing the largest would hopefully stop the population explosion. So far, I’ve re-homed or surrendered the original females and more than 40 offspring, eight to ten at a time.

At the moment, the platy population is down to about ten babies. They grow incredibly fast. I’m hoping to get them out before they have more babies.

Ironically, I never wanted platies. I’ve had them before–lots of times–but always in a community tank with fish that apparently ate a lot better than I knew. The first in my current tank was supposed to be a male sword tail. I went back for a male to keep her company.

Two surviving sailfin mollies are both males. Only two of the ten or so guppies are females. With the larger platies gone, I’m hoping more guppy babies survive.

In addition to the livebearers, I have two otocinclus algae eaters and a panda Cory cat. A few days ago, I noticed a clump of eggs on the side of the tank. They’re probably otocinclus which are supposed to be hard to spawn.

We’ll see what happens. I’m not optmistic. The fry are even smaller than newborn guppies so survival is unlikely. I’ll keep you posted. As always, thanks for stuppoing by.