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Why Your Platy Is Making Bubbles!

With a number of photographs of brightly colored platies with unique patterns going viral recently, there has been an additional spike in the popularity of keeping platies when the species was already booming making it one of the most popular fish to keep within the fish keeping hobby right now.

Due to so many people in the hobby being new to keeping platies, we have noticed a number of people reaching out and asking various questions about the species with a common question being about a platy making bubbles in its tank.

The most common reason behind a platy making bubbles is due to the fish being hungry and wanting you to feed it.

A less common cause of a platy making bubbles in it tank is due to a lack of available oxygen in the water of the tank resulting in the fish blowing bubbles, often near the surface of the water in an attempt to find areas of oxygen to breathe.

A very small number of platies will just randomly make bubbles on a regular basis as a standard behavior for that fish.

This is very rare though and the majority of the time when you see a platy making bubbles, it is a sign of a potential problem in the aquarium that needs to be investigated be the behavior due to problems with oxygen or food but thankfully, both are usually easy to fix in most situations.

Is It Normal For A Platy To Be Making Bubbles?

In very rare cases, it can be considered normal for a platy to be making bubbles as a small number of platies can develop the behavior as a habit.

In the majority of cases, if a platy is making bubbles in its tank then your fish is probably having problems with the oxygen levels in its tank or it is hungry.

We have seen some people say that a platy blowing bubbles in its aquarium is a sign of the fish having internal parasites but we have seen little evidence to back this up.

It seems that this piece of advice was offered on social media and people just ran with it and kept on repeating this internal parasite issue over and over again until some people consider it common knowledge now but there is minimal evidence to back it up.

There is a case that can be made that a platy may be blowing bubbles due to it having ate an unsuitable food that contains too much gas for the fish.

As with humans who consume too much gas, we burp it out and this can make your platy appear to be blowing bubbles.

This is usually if your platy is eating surface floating pellets and gulping down air when feeding but this should not be a consistent issue and should stop after around five minutes of feeding if you think that this may be the cause.

Is There Anything I Can Do To Stop A Platy Making Bubbles?

You are often able to help a platy that is blowing bubbles by feeding the fish or checking the tanks oxygen levels as these are the two most common issues that can cause a platy to blow bubbles.

There are some less common issues that can cause your a platy to make bubbles too but these are usually temporary and will often only affect the fish for less than half an hour.

This means that if your platy is making bubbles due to one of the less common reasons, it should naturally stop blowing bubbles after between five and thirty minutes anyway removing the need for you to take any action to stop the fish from blowing bubbles.

It can be difficult to check the oxygen levels in your aquarium to confirm this as the fault due to a cheap dissolved oxygen meter still being expensive so some people will just check CO2 levels but this is not the best way to confirm the problem.

If you suspect that your platy is making bubbles due to wanting to be fed then try to stick to your normal feeding schedule but double check that you are adding enough food to your tank to meet the needs of all the fish in there.

Some fish are greedy and will try to get food even if they are not hungry and over time, a platy may form the que/reward loop of it blowing bubbles and you feeding it causing it to repeat the bubble blowing over and over to try and get food from you.

This may sound unlikely but these simple habit loops are surprisingly common in a number of fish species.

Do Platys Make Bubble Nests?

Platies are livebeareres and give birth to live young so they do not build out a bubble nest like a betta fish or some other fish species might.

If your platy is blowing bubbles then it is not due to the fish trying to make a bubble nest even though some people on social media do claim this to be the case.

If you are trying to breed your platies then moving a pregnant female to a separate breeding tank that is free from predators is almost always going to be the best option if possible and offer you the highest possible survivable rate for your platy fry.

Just remember that a platy mother can and will eat her own babies so once she has given birth, return the mother back to the main tank to let the fry go about their business without being eaten.

Conclusion

That brings our article going over why your platy is making bubbles to an end. We hope that we have been able to help as many of our readers as possible and that your platy is only making bubbles due to it trying to get you to feed the fish. A lack of oxygen in the tank is difficult to confirm and depending on your aquarium setup, it can also be difficult to correct in some cases too.