2007-12-19 12:34:00 · 7 answers · asked by Anonymous in Pets ➔ Fish
Unless you are referring to a livebearer like Guppies, Mollies, Swordtails, Platties, and a select few others, you don't need to worry about pregnant fish. Your average, run-of-the-mill fish doesn't get pregnant. They lay eggs. Also, housing females and males separately would cost them twice as much. If you don't want pregnant fish, get a male!
Soop Nazi
2007-12-19 12:40:18 · answer #1 · answered by nosoop4u246 7 · 7⤊ 1⤋
Most pet stores I know of only house male and female fish together if they know they either will not breed in the tank because of unsavory conditions or because they are a small pet store and have run out of spare tanks or people to clean the tanks. The only problem fish are fish such as Guppies, platies and mollies. Most of the other fish like Tetras and goldfish will not breed in a community tank and even if they did, they would not carry the pregnancy to full term or the young wouldn't survive.
The only sure way not to get a pregnant fish is to buy direct from the breeder, this is because breeders usually take great pride in selecting the fish they want to breed in order to better the quality of the breed on the whole, therefor they separate the fish so that the lines are not tainted. This will be more expensive though and it can be hard to find a reputable breeder.
Like I said before, lack of space and the knowledge that those particular type of fish can not breed in a community tank or are very difficult to breed in a community tank are usually why pet stores keep males and females together, but some pet stores keep them together because they either can not be bothered to separate them or they just don't care if they are selling you pregnant fish. My advice is to learn how to read the signs of a pregnant fish and just not buy them if you think they might be pregnant but on some types of fish, this can be very hard to do.
2007-12-19 21:10:54 · answer #2 · answered by snakestersnake 4 · 1⤊ 3⤋
partially its a situation of a shop only offering half the variety of fish if they were to split all their tanks into seperate males and females plus the cost would be higher for each fish .
you also have to consider all their fish (except for guppies and bettas) come to them as mixed sexes bags of fish. they like to put them in tanks this way to lower the chances of disease being spread between all their other fish.were they to be seperated
A good pet shop can tell the sex of their fish if they are mature enough but often choose not to seperate them because there is no need to.
breeding can be a complicated effort and with the exception of livebearers its not as simple as just having them together
2007-12-19 23:55:39 · answer #3 · answered by john e 4 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Most fish sold at pet shops are very young and in many fish, it's difficult to distinguish male from female. Also, many fish housed together in pet shops are too young to breed.
I have noticed that most pet shops separate guppies according to male/female to avoid breeding as these fish have a very prolific mating cycle that starts at a young age.
2007-12-19 20:41:00 · answer #4 · answered by Finatic 7 · 5⤊ 0⤋
It really depends on the type of fish. Other than livebearers such as guppies, mollies, platys, swordtails, etc. most fish are pretty picky about breeding conditions such as water parameters, temperature, etc. and often require different conditions than they regularly live in. (i.e. they prefer warmer water for breeding). So unless you are looking at buying a livebearer, you probably won't get a pregnant fish.
2007-12-19 20:41:58 · answer #5 · answered by jbarnes0916 1 · 2⤊ 1⤋
two things
1 they no want to waste more $ on another tank
2 they dont want to waste $ on more fish so they just have the fish they got mate
2007-12-19 20:42:07 · answer #6 · answered by killer1994 3 · 1⤊ 3⤋
They can't tell them apart.
2007-12-19 20:41:30 · answer #7 · answered by jhawksports 2 · 2⤊ 2⤋