How Long Does It Take A Guppy To Befull Grown?

[Jammyjames59]

hi,
how long does it take a guppy to be full grown (i mean big enough to sell to a pet shop)
that sort of size?
becuase i only feed my fry once or twice a day and it take months and moneths for mine to grow up, i think im doing something wrong need help!

 

[Colin_T]

Under good conditions your fish should be big enough to sell when about 3months old.

Your fish are growing slowly because they aren't being fed enough. You need to feed them at least 3 times per day. Make sure they eat all the food and none is left to rot on the bottom of the tank.
Feed the fish with newly hatched brineshrimp and microworms. When they are bigger offer them some raw finely chopped prawn/ shrimp. Try not to feed baby fish with dry foods because it won't make them grow. Dry foods will sustain fish but will not do much to help them grow.

You need to do regular partial water changes. I used to do a 50-75% water change each day. However, it depends on how many fish are in the tank, and how big the tank is. A big tank with only a few fish doesn't need as many water changes. Small tanks with lots of fish should get a water change each day.

Keep the temperature warm, around 28C.

 

[fry_forever!]

My fish take a while to grow as well, but that is only because they don't have that much room to grow, (two 10 gallons for 50 fry, including molly and sword fry.) and like Colin said, you need to feed them live food. (Or at least not dry foods.) But I am severely allergic to most live and frozen foods, (I can't even be near them.) so I have lots of trouble feeding my fry properly.

Can someone please give me step by step instructions on how to hatch BBS? (I have a mental block with instructions, so I need them to be real simple.)

Thanks.

 

[Polley]

My fish take a while to grow as well, but that is only because they don't have that much room to grow, (two 10 gallons for 50 fry, including molly and sword fry.) and like Colin said, you need to feed them live food. (Or at least not dry foods.) But I am severely allergic to most live and frozen foods, (I can't even be near them.) so I have lots of trouble feeding my fry properly.

Can someone please give me step by step instructions on how to hatch BBS? (I have a mental block with instructions, so I need them to be real simple.)

Thanks.

Hey, I'm not sure about where you are, but at my LFS they sell a tube of brine eggs, and you just follow the instructions on the box it comes in, and in a few hours you supposedly have baby brine shrimp that you can just put right in the tank. I've not tried it, however, but it sounds like a good plan ...and the instructions are really simple! It's like, put in water and keep dark, or something like that lol.

 

[fry_forever!]

Thank you very much. I'm buying some tomorrow. Does anyone know how long the BBS live for, and how long it takes to hatch, how to store them? Are they still good when they are dead?
Thanks.

 

[Colin_T]

Brineshrimp eggs are available in a dry powder form, and in a saline solution. The eggs that are sold in the saline solution have had their shells removed and are sold as decapsulated brineshrimp eggs. The dry eggs are brown and should be sold in a sealed airtight container.

To hatch brineshrimp eggs, either dry or decapsulated.
Make up some salt water to about the same strength as sea/ ocean water. If you live near the beach you can collect some seawater and use that. You can use rock/ swimming pool salt, or marine salt to make up the salt water. Rock/ swimming pool salt is the cheapest and works fine. You will need a hydrometer (salt measuring device from the petshop) to get the right salt levels.
Salt will take a few hours, often more to fully dissolve in water. Therefore you should make up the saltwater and aerate it for at least 12 hours, preferably 24hours before using it. Then check the salt levels and adjust if necessary. The saltwater does not have to be exactly the same as seawater, and the eggs will hatch in any water that is similar to seawater, (slightly fresher, or way more salty).

Once you have a bucket of salt water, add about 1 litre of salt water to a 2litre plastic container. You can use a plastic fizzy drink bottle or anything similar. I use a 2litre plastic icecream bucket.

Add an airstone to the litre of salt water.

Add about 1/4 level teaspoon of dry brineshrimp eggs to the 1litre of saltwater. Don’t add too many eggs because the results will be poor and most won’t hatch.

Leave the eggs to aerate for a day or so. Try to keep the hatching container warm (around 28-30C). The eggs hatch faster when warm. I leave my container on top of the fish tank coverglass.

After 24-48 hours the eggs should have hatched and there will be brown things on the surface and bottom of the container, and orange things in the middle. Take the airstone out and leave the water to settle for a couple of minutes. The newly hatched brineshrimp (orange things) will gather in a group and you can suck them out with an eye-dropper.
The baby brineshrimp prefer to gather near a light. If you have a light on one side of the container the shrimp will gather there.

Once you have removed some of the shrimp, put the airstone back in the container and leave it until you need more.

You need to start hatching more eggs every couple of days or even each day depending on how much you use. Don’t try to keep the baby shrimp for more than a couple of days because they start to die as the old empty shells break down and pollute the water.

You should use a plant mister with some freshwater in, to wash the dry eggs off the side of the hatching container throughout the day.

Decapsulated eggs are hatched in the same way, except they don’t have shells and hatch out quicker.

 

[fry_forever!]

Thank you very much. I've always read that you need a funnel shaped object, like a 2L pop bottle. Why?
And can I use aquarium salt? It says you can use it for hatching brine shrimp. This is sounding WAY too confusing for my liking...
I hope that it's one of those things that you get better at with experience, because right now I am swimming in confusion...

 

[Colin_T]

People like using a pop bottle that is turned upsidedown so the eggs fall back down and collect in the end. It doesn't really make any difference what sort of container you use. You just need a container that holds water and allows the eggs and water to mix when aerated.

You can use any type of salt. Rock salt or swimming pool salt is the cheapest salt and can be bought from a swimming pool shop, hardware or most supermarkets. It costs a few dollars for a big bag of the stuff, whereas aquarium salt costs a few dollars for a small bag of the stuff.
If the aquarium salt is blue then it will have chemicals added to it and should not be used.
Lots of petshops make their own aquarium salt out of rock salt.

 

[fish48]

cooking salt is cheap and is as good as any other.

 

[fry_forever!]

People like using a pop bottle that is turned upsidedown so the eggs fall back down and collect in the end. It doesn't really make any difference what sort of container you use. You just need a container that holds water and allows the eggs and water to mix when aerated.

You can use any type of salt. Rock salt or swimming pool salt is the cheapest salt and can be bought from a swimming pool shop, hardware or most supermarkets. It costs a few dollars for a big bag of the stuff, whereas aquarium salt costs a few dollars for a small bag of the stuff.
If the aquarium salt is blue then it will have chemicals added to it and should not be used.
Lots of petshops make their own aquarium salt out of rock salt.

Awesome. I have a swimming pool in my yard, so I'm sure that my Dad has some of that salt. But next time. I already set it up.
103_2982.jpg (1.3 MB)
Thanks for all the help.
BTW, why is my mixture so clear? Everyone else has brownish water...?

cooking salt is cheap and is as good as any other.

Yes, I read that.

 

[Colin_T]

103_2982.jpg (1.3 MB)
why is my mixture so clear? Everyone else has brownish water...?

The mixture is fine and will go brown when the eggs have hatched.

You don't need that much water either, about 2/3 that amount would be adequate.

You will probably want to chop the top off the bottle so you can get the newly hatched brineshrimp out, and so you can clean the container and refill it with clean saltwater for the next batch of eggs. The cleaner the containers the better the hatching rate. Dirty containers develop lots of bacteria that damage the eggs and baby shrimp.

 

[fry_forever!]

Thank you very much. The mixture is turning a little more brown. Is it okay if the bottle is tinted?
Also, why can't the temperature pass a certain point, like 82F?
What will happen....?
Thanks for all the help!

 

[Colin_T]

It is fine for the bottle to be tinted. I have hatched them in clear glass containers and dark blue containers. The colour won't affect anything but dark containers are harder to see the newly hatched shrimp in. But the green coloured bottle you are using is fine and will work well.

The eggs will hatch in warm water but if the temperature gets too high there is less oxygen in the water and the baby shrimp will often die soon after they hatch, or they just don’t hatch. However, they are fine in water up to 32C, (sorry, not sure what that is in F).

 

[cookiemistress]

Under good conditions your fish should be big enough to sell when about 3months old.

Your fish are growing slowly because they aren't being fed enough. You need to feed them at least 3 times per day. Make sure they eat all the food and none is left to rot on the bottom of the tank.
Feed the fish with newly hatched brineshrimp and microworms. When they are bigger offer them some raw finely chopped prawn/ shrimp. Try not to feed baby fish with dry foods because it won't make them grow. Dry foods will sustain fish but will not do much to help them grow.

You need to do regular partial water changes. I used to do a 50-75% water change each day. However, it depends on how many fish are in the tank, and how big the tank is. A big tank with only a few fish doesn't need as many water changes. Small tanks with lots of fish should get a water change each day.

Keep the temperature warm, around 28C.

Ive always fed my guppy fry dried food and they are growing perfectly fine, i think they r probably about a month old and just starting to feed occassional blood worm that they seem to love seriously less than a min and all 15 fry come out an devour the bloodworm i put in.