Ive noticed gravid spots on my females but ive found this spot down to the lighting in the tank when i use the lamp the gravid spot is quite clear however when i have the light off over night and put it on first thing in the morning there is no gravid spot until the light has been on for a while maybe its something to do with the uv light and pigments in the fish

Hello all, new guy to the forum but not in the pond.
The youngest I have seen a female get hooked was 6 weeks.
I had three females and one male in a 10gl tank to breed as feeders.
Well, the middle sized female killed the other two females with in a week of arrival to the farm.
Then it was on, after the first spurt of fry, I seperated the young into a 5gl micro habitat.
After six weeks, three of the first group have already started to get really dark and fat, now they are in the 10gl tank with another group of guppies and eight more females being prego as well.
This is really facsinating all together. My wife arrives home with a bag of ten feeders for the preditors. I dump them into the feeder farm and as they are required I am trying to thin them out. Now I have four different verieties of rainbow, blue streaks, halfnhalf black n golds, three spots with sword tails and rainbow streaks, and some other really cool mixture of high fin mutants too boot.
My Africans are really very picky on which will get munched and sometimes the feeders will last up to 3 days in the pit.
I am presently setting up a long 45gl tank for more breading room and the 10gl tanks will become the nersery. I also have a 45gl tall being nurtured into a live reef tank, so time will tell once it gets populated.
Guppies are like rabbits, two males per female make for a rouddy tank. Especially when you now have more females per males. it is 3:1 ratio and growing. Time to go get a different color male with other features..... 8>) lol

Wow great info.......Thanks, I have five female guppies all pregnant and well must agree I have had guppies for roughly 10years and they only go black when pregnant. Mine are due to "pop" soon and cant wait, I keep two of my ladies in a breading box till they drop, then remove them and transfer my fry to a breeding tank. Have only had good luck so far. Must be honest I run out of patience at times waiting for them to drop.

Awww i just bought my 4 guppys 2 male 2 female and im always crafty when buying because i get the pregnant ones haha
one i call mogwai is heavily pregnant so im staring at her obsessively. i have invested so much money in new stock over the years and i can get my platties and guppies to breed. hope i can breed my tetras but have difficulty

Very good info there. My guppy had a dark gravid spot when it have birth 2 days ago and still the dark gravid spot is still there. So does that mean it didn't give birth to all the fry's? or is it pregnant again right after giving birth? It still looks fat, but much slimer than how it was before giving birth. I used a plastic breeding trap and that worked great..although not many fry's fell to the bottom and they were mostly swimming at the top looking for food..not much of a trap there =)

This is how the mother looked when it gave it's first birth (you can see the fry sitting on top of her)
 Guppy_mother.JPG ( 31.04K ) Number of downloads: 14


This is how she looked 2 days after giving birth.
 2days_After_giving_birth.JPG ( 26.58K ) Number of downloads: 10


And these were the Fry's after 1 day..There is approx 40 fry's and they seem to be all healthy =D
 My_guppy_Babies.JPG ( 12.42K ) Number of downloads: 10


Thanks

Frankie

This post has been edited by Fra[nk]iez: Oct 31 2007, 12:57 PM

I think guppy pregnancy is such a mystery!

My first female arrived home pregnant. It took about a month before she dropped her fry, but she didn't offload all at once, it took her about 2 weeks to finish having babies, but she had only had about 12 babies in total spaced out over 2 weeks. Her gravid spot never went away. well she recently died. It wasn't until she died that her gravid spot went away.

All my other female guppies have dark gravid spots, but they are permanently like that, there are never any fry. Actually, one dropped 2 babies after a waterchange (must have been stressed) and another had about 50 fry over 2 days, but that was months ago and I haven't seen any fry since.

Also, I had a big bare patch in the gravel without any plants and all the fry just hung around the bottom not hiding at all. My guppies would not eat the fry! They had no interest in eating the babies. I ended up so overrun with those 50 babies I went out and bought some phantom tetras. The phantoms ate the fry no trouble at all.

Do guppies store babies infinitely? How come my first guppy gave birth to so few babies over the course of 2 weeks?

This post has been edited by kuraiza: Nov 1 2007, 07:32 AM

these are 2 new guppy females that i bought yesterday. they were in separate tanks at the store but i dont know if they were ever mixed with males. any guess if they are actually pregnant and how long until they pop.

yeah their both pregnant but it should take a while until she lays

well the larger one gave birth as i was posting the last post. had 17 that i could find in the tank. i didnt have a chance to separate her from the rest of my fish before she dropped and i had to hunt for the fry. one was dead so only 16 survived. right now i have the smaller pregnant female separated. im not sure when she is going to drop but she looks much bigger than the larger one did. heres a pic of some of the fry.

nice
my guppy is about to lay
im just gana leave her in with the rest
i have plants, and this little hideout where only fry can get into

well the other female had fry today. about 13 that i could find. now i have 30 fry in a separator.

Hi everyone, i finally got around to doing some more stuff on keeping guppys- i've basically written up some long posts with an important detailed picture to go with them, basically going through various aspects of keeping guppys. Its not a particularly indepth post on guppy tanks, but i hope it may still be useful or interesting to some . Please let me know if there are any bad spelling errors or mistakes in my info etc that i can improve on .

Anyhoo, here we go;

A good guppy community tank set up.


Here in this pic below I have drawn is an example of a good guppy tank set up- of course not everything is to scale, a 10gallon and 5gallon tank look a lot larger in comparison to some guppys or a bucket as I have drawn, but I have tried to be as detailed as possible while getting straight to the points with the picture.
I will give an explanation to everything I have included in this picture below (note: please click on it to make it larger, as the pic is currently shrunk down by the forum);




1. Tank hood- it is good to have a well-fitting hood or something like a condensation tray covering the tank, not only will this cut down on condensation that escapes the tank, but will also make the fish safer.
Guppys don’t have a big reputation for being jumpers or anything like that, but all small prey-type fish like guppys do have the ability to jump out of the water and this could happen in your tank if it is uncovered (the guppy may not jump out of the tank intentionally, a fly could buzz close to the surface of the water and the fish could jump to catch it, but ends up flopping around on the carpet instead etc).

2. Lighting is not essential for keeping guppys but is important to have if you have live plants in the tank- in my humble opinion, lighting also makes tanks look a hundreds times better when they are lit up, you will appreciate the colours of your fish more etc.

3. Filtration is important for guppy tanks, without it the tank will be stuck in a perpetual state of cycling which would be very stressful for the fish unless you did water changes every day on the tank. Water movement created by the filtration also helps oxygenate the water too which is good for the fish.

Most livebearers prefer to be in medium to strongly filtered tanks, the only livebearers I can find of from the top of my head which really don’t like a strong water current in the tank are certain varieties of male fancy guppys, like the male guppys which have large delta tails. Such guppys should be treated like betta’s (Siamese fighting fish), and only be kept in tanks which have a very gentle/weak water current in them.
When you buy a filter for your tank (and there are many types of filtration to take into consideration as well), you should get a filter than can easily cope with the gallons of your tank. If your tank is very long, it may be better to get 2 filters and stick them at opposite ends of the tank.
Fry tanks should have medium strength filtration in general depending on how many fry you have, fry should not get stuck in filters if they are healthy and born strong (i.e. not runt of the litter).

With sponge filters, the finer/denser the sponge the more surface area it will offer to grow beneficial bacteria on so the better it is for the biological filtration of the tank, course large-holed sponges though are better for trapping waste in them and are so better for the mechanical filtration of the tank. Carbon sponges are good for removing chemicals like medicines from the tank water, but otherwise have little use and only stay active for a certain period of time before their chemical absorbing abilities run out.

You should clean out your filter in old tank water taken from the main tank every 1-3 weeks or whenever necessary (i.e. when the filter becomes so clogged up its current is weakened). Don’t over-clean the filter (just remove enough muck so it runs smoothly) and never clean it out in un-dechlorinated tap water otherwise you may cause the tank to mini-cycle etc.

4. There are certainly important benefits to having a tank which has a heater in it, it isn’t absolutely essential if you can keep the tank at a stable tropical room temp, however most people do not have a room with such a stable day in and night out temp. A quick fluctuation in temp of 3 degree’s or more is all that is needed to sometimes cause serious health problems in fish like dropsy and septicaemia.
Having a heater will help prevent the tanks temperature falling below the temp you set the heater at- if the temp rises above the temp you set the heater at the heater will simply stop heating the water.

5. Live plants can remove nitrates from the tank water (which is good if you suffer from excessive nitrate problems) as they use it as a fertiliser, they can also help prevent algae problems by out-competing the algae for nutrients and light etc, and they of course look very pleasant.
But beyond that there aren’t really anymore benefits of having live plants over fake ones. The benefit of having planting in general, whether real or fake, is that it has the positive effect of lowering the stress levels of fish and can also offer cover to sick or bullied fish or fish in labour and also fry too. Fake plants have the benefits over live/real ones of obviously not having any special lighting requirements- silk fake plants are better than plastic ones though because they are less likely to scratch fish or get fish trapped in them (plus silk plants also generally look more realistic than plastic ones).

Check whether your live plants are actually true aquarium plants, as there are a lot of plants which are only semi-aquatic or not aquatic at all which are sold in the hobby as true fully aquatic plants. Generally speaking, most plants which can support themselves upright out of the water or have variegated leaves tend not to be true fully aquatic plants, and although they may survive for quite a while being fully submerged, they will eventually start to rot and die off.
So research your live plants and also make sure you are providing them the right lighting etc .

6. & 7. Having other décor like rocks, pebbles, wood, caves, bridges etc all help in creating a more stress-free environment for the guppys to live in, as well as just making the aquarium more interesting to look at and more personalised to your creative fish keeping aquarium style etc. Be careful though, since some types of rocks and wood can be bad for fish and may do stuff like change the ph of the tank too much for the worse etc.

7. Substrate- a substrate is not essential for guppy tanks, you can have a bare bottom tank if you want to, but obviously it is good to have a substrate if you want to have plants in the tank. I personally think having a sand substrate is good for guppys since it cuts down on the reflection coming off from the bottom of the tank and so helps bring out their colours (since certain lighting may actually fade the colours of the fish) etc. Certain types of fish do also need or thrive off certain types of substrate though, so having a substrate in the tank will increase your options when it comes to choosing other types of fish as tankmates for your guppys.


Sand is an easier substrate to maintain than gravel because it traps less waste in it, waste simply floats on the surface of the sand and gets blown in the filter- a depth of no more 2inches of sand is good as any deeper and you may have deal with pockets of gas created by anaerobic bacteria building up in the sand if it is particularly fine sand. Gravel is absolutely fine though, it does need more regular cleaning though and may become annoying when you are trying to catch newborn guppy fry and they dive for the substrate and hide in the gravel, making them impossible to catch etc.

Not all types of sand are safe though, certainly avoid building sand or marine sand/crushed coral sand as these types of sand are either toxic to fish or will dramatically change the ph of the tank. Children’s playsand and silica/blasting/pool sand are safe though.

Regardless of what type of substrate you go for, make sure you wash it thoroughly in plain tap water before you put it in the tank, otherwise it is likely to make the tank very cloudy for days on end from all the dust in it etc.

9. Fish flakes are the standard form of food for guppys, however variety in diet is one of the many keys to good health in guppys, so its good if you have a range of different types of dried foods as well as some frozen fish foods in the freezer too etc. Guppys are omnivores/insectivores so a little bit of everything (including veg like cooked chopped up de-shelled pea’s or chopped up blanched spinach etc) is good in their diet.
Feeding a more varied and suitable nutritious diet to your guppys with help prevent them developing problems like constipation (which can lead to whole load of other problems, like swim bladder disorders and dropsy etc), and will help encourage them to develop better colours and grow larger too and help fry grow to a larger size as well. Female guppys which have been fed a good diet are also more likely to recover well after giving birth to lots of fry.

Live or fresh foods are the best/most nutritious, followed by frozen foods, then followed by dried foods. Don’t feed fish stale fish food as the nutritional content of stale fish food goes down more and more the older it gets and it may cause the fish digestive problems etc. There are special foods for fry as well- generally speaking, it is good to feed adult guppys twice a day (or even 3 times a day If the portions are small) and fry at least 3-4 small portions a day.


(Continued in a moment)

(continued)

10. You need dechlorinator/water conditioner to remove chlorine and heavy metals found in tap water for the benefit to the health of your fish, if you don’t neutralise the chlorine in particular from the tap water it will have a negative effect on the health of your fish and your tank will also always be cycling (since the beneficial nitrifying bacteria which keep your tanks water quality good and stable will not be able to survive in water which has chlorine in it etc).

11. Even if your heater is reliable and good in your tank, it is still very wise to have some sort of thermometer in your tank which can tell you its temp- the heater may break, there could be a very hot or cold day, the equipment in the tank may over-heat etc; a heater can’t tell you these things, so its important to have some type of thermometer in the tank. There are many types of thermometers though which vary in their accuracy of telling temp, I’ve heard the digital ones are the most accurate, there are quite a few threads on the forum done on this subject if you do a search you should be able to find them.

12. Even if your tank is established and mature, water quality can still go wrong, so it is still important to have some accurate water quality testing kits which can test for at least ammonia, nitrites, nitrates and ph- water quality test kits are very important in new tank (especially cycling tanks) set ups where the beneficial bacteria which keeps the water quality good and stable is not so established and hardy etc.

13. Ah, the trusty bucket. Always helpful/handy when doing water changes!

14. Net- its important to always have a decent sized net on standby in case you need to move or separate any fish. The finer the fabric of the net the better, since the larger the holes in the net the more likely they are to cause damage to the protective slime layer coat of the fish.

15. A towel which you use only for fish keeping matters is always very handy to mop up any spills as you go along your tank cleaning business or to wipe clean the outside of the tank or dry your hands etc, its important to make sure that the towel never comes into contact with stuff like soap, room spray, general cleaning chemicals etc- such chemicals, even in tiny quantities, can cause havoc to your tank and fish if accidentally introduced.

16. A spare plastic container/tub is always handy for transferring and acclimatising fish from one tank to another or for putting fish in to inspect them closer if they look unwell etc.

17. Sponge- same stuff said for the towel applies here. Bottom rule at the end of the day is to make sure that all of your fish tank stuff doesn’t come into contact with any chemicals.



… … …

There are countless accessories and extra gadgets you can get for your aquarium, from gravel and sand vacs for cleaning the substrate, to algae magnet scrapers and bubble pumps etc. I have just listed a few of the main things when it comes to keeping guppys, although a great deal of what I have written here applies to many other fish in the hobby as well .

You don’t need to have a hospital/quarantine tank, but having one will help a great deal in helping prevent introducing fish diseases and parasites into your main tank, and although you don’t need a fry tank either, if you want to raise guppy fry it does help a great deal if you have a decent sized fry tank, since fry can only live for a limited amount of time in things like breeding nets/traps.


This post has been edited by Tokis-Phoenix: Nov 12 2007, 04:28 PM

NICE!!!!!!!!!! I already new most of the stuff already posted, but no doubt will come in handy to a newbie!

ok I have read this entire topic and found no def answer to the question I have. I read a lot about in bredding in this topic and I have always heard the ration is 3 to 1(right?) so to prevent in bredding how many of each should I maintain?

Hi Folks. Great thread I will be printing some of it out to keep as a reference.

I have a question...

I had my female guppy in the tank with the other guppies and platies and moved her over to her own tank yesterday because she's pregnant and she started hiding behind the filter and heater so i thought she may be about to pop. So moved her...since moving her she's been timid, some what sluggish and i actually thought she was dead this morning so scooped her out only to find she was alive and well! She went from being in a tank with about 17other fish to by herself...I thought she may of been overly stressed so I covered her tank with a towel as i heard they dont like being on 'display' when about to give birth so she could have some privacy and not feel like she was on display and I also added a bunch of plants for her to hide in aswell.

Its quite heavily planted now. When/if she gives birth she will go back into the main tank because the one shes in now is our fry tank.

After adding the plants she is swimming around but is still jumpy...still hiding a lot and she doesnt appear to be as 'fat' as she was the other day.

I cant see any signs of aborted stuff in the sand on the bottom of the tank so im wondering if she is just tierd from the pregnancy/stressed out or if there is something wrong? I tested her water and all the nitrIte, nitrAte, ammonia and pH levels came back good so im really confused...

I love my fish and there being something possibly wrong wit her makes me sad and stressed

The tank currently still has the towel on it with the lamp off but the light from my lounge room would still help her know its nearlly 9pm. I dont want to snap a photo of her incase it scares her...

This post has been edited by electric yellow: Dec 27 2007, 09:40 AM