Hey,

I just cant seem to get my swordtails, platties and mollys to produce fry. They get extremely round and then moved to a small breeding tank about a week before they are due and just wont drop their fry? This is disappointing and would like to know if anyone can offer some advice?

Thanks in advance!

Sounds like a matter of timing , if you want to use the breeding boxes , you need to time it so they will drop withing 24 hours of putting them in there or they will stress and either injest the baby's or have stillborn. You can always fill a tank with fine leaved plants and just move them to there to drop then let the babies stay to grow and move the mother back to her normal tank .... good luck

My "breeding tank" is a 5l tank with plastic plants in it as the traps weren't working? Maybe I need more plants?

i leave mine to do what ever in my tanks (i have heaps of plants in there tho) and they grow up, a few must get eaten but a lot survive

I used a 30L tank, had a bunch of indian fern etc in it, nothing flash and a sponge filter, put the platty in and all went well. I've had to stop doing this as I now have over 100 plattys which are reaching maturity now.

Some pretty ones in there tho.

But yeah if you've got stuff like indian fern floating on the surface, and lots of planted stuff like java moss etc then you should get them increasing in numbers easily.

Main reason I moved my females was because the tank has angels, kribs etc in it and they love platty patties.