Sadly, my male crowntail betta committed fishy suicide over the weekend. His tank was uncovered but was heavily planted with tons of floating hornwort. I had never heard of bettas jumping ship before so I never worried about him.
Anyway...I had never owned guppies before, so I thought I'd give it a shot. I bought a pretty male and two females for my betta's old 5g tank. I still have plenty of hornwort, fairly large gravel, and a small castle type ornament that the guppies don't seem at all interested in.
I've read all kinds of conflicting stories; some people say they don't know what to do with all the fry their guppies pump out, other articles say you need to get the fry to their own tanks a.s.a.p. or at least provide tons of space and cover to let them grow large enough to not become food for their parents.
I'm not looking to start a guppy farm, but I definitely wouldn't mind having at least some fry grow big enough to be fed to my cichlids. What are my chances?
hi
your chances are good.guppys are not called millions fish
for no reason.keep the tank well planted and you should
have fry survive.
any chance of getting another tank,say a ten glln,
then you can keep the fry seperate from the adults,and you
can have more females which will increase your fry load.
Cool. What about those breeder nets? Could I put one of those in one of my larger tanks and either catch the fry and move them there or move the pregnant females there?
Also...eventually I want to put an Oto or something with the guppies (if there's ever any substantial algae growth) but I also don't like having tanks without some sort of scavenger. A couple ghost shrimp would be nice, but will they eat guppy fry?
hmmm i think some shrimp will if given a chance,
however not sure what species do.
i've got ghost shrimp in with my guppys and they seem to
just eat the shrimp pellets that i give them,the greatest threat to the fry is the platys.
you can put the fry in there,and then let them out when
they are bigger.some people use the breeder nets for the females,
i don't know how they get on,the only time i used a breeder net
was for cory eggs and babies.
cory cats never did any thing to my guppy fry cause they stay on the bottom you might want to get some of them to clean up the bottom. I have never used the breeding nets but I hear they work the babys usually can fend for themselves if you have a thickly planted tank also if u plan on catching them catch them right after she has them so you can watch were they go because they are so tiny and hard to see hope every thing goes good
ps. my firemouth loves my guppy fry 8) :lol: :BIGgrin: :greenyay:
after having guppies for a couple months you should get used to predicting when they are going to drop. i'm by no means an expert but when i saw one of my females start to square off in the back i placed her in a breeding trap and the next day she had a drop of about 30 fry. they are currently growing strong and healthy in their own tank but i believe with a small drop like this they could stay in the breeding trap until they are just about big enough to not get eaten. this way you can keep any scavenger in that tank so long as it doesn't eat adult guppies.
deffinately wouldn't keep 30+ guppies in a 5 gallon tank though. maybe a few getting eaten may be a good thing in your case.
I find the net breeders are very stressful for the mother. On top of that she is then trapped with the babies and they have nowhere to go so she eats them. If they are in the main tank they have a chance of getting cover in the plants. I can't recommend NOt using the net reeder enough.
Good luck with it. It's good that you actually have a use and a plan for the babies rather than just wildly overstocking your tank with no idea what to do.
I started a tank for the secretaries at my work in thier office..I didn't want to spend alot of $ on it so I got some Fancy Guppies and Neon Tetras ( they said they wanted colorful fish)..I figured the neons would eat some babies and also I thought that the guppies would eat some as well....I now have a second Guppie tank in my Lab.......
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