Any Tips Or Info About Common Livebearers

[Duck and Dive]

Hi

Try to post any tips, facts or info to help newbies who have just started or starting to keep common livbearers.

Ill start:

Guppies
Before you get a tank set up for livebearers you should always keep in mind the amount that they breed. When males and females get together they will start breeding almost inatantly. The females have fry every six weeks, the amount of fry they can have ranges from 10-35. But in some cases I've herd they can have up to 70 young in one broad! So before you think of putting males with females you should also have in mind a rearing tank for the fry.

But I have 40 babies in my tank, they are medium sized about 2cm in a 60L, now I have to buy a 215L with a divider to put the babies in and to stop the adults from breeding!

 

[5teady_2012]

When selecting the sexes of your livebearers, always have a ratio of 1 male to every 3 females.

If wanting to keep livebearers and breed them, its always best to have a couple of breeding traps as they will come in handy when wanting to save the fry.

Male livebearers have a gonopodium (penis in other words)

Females livebearers have a anal fin

 

[Duck and Dive]

Livebearers need a hight vegetable diet (guppies,mollies and platies). So a good idea would be to feed them tetra pro vegetable or something like that. Livebearers also need to have a lot of live food, you should feed them twice a week, or more. But fry and baby fish sould get live food more often, frozen or live it doesn't really matter.

 

[LauraFrog]

If you don't want all the fry that are born (unless you're creating yourself a large school of a particular strain from a small breeding group, you almost certainly won't) the LFS will take pretty ones. Fry that don't have colours can be sold as feeders to people who like keeping big predatory fish. It sounds awful but you have to get used to the idea that you aren't under an obligation to raise to adulthood every baby fish that appears in your tank.

If you absolutely don't want fry, buy only males. Females can store sperm for months after they mate - up to eight drops on one mating has been recorded. This neat trick means that if you buy a female that has had any contact with males, even in the bag being transported to the dealer's - she may not look pregnant but you will have fry, and more fry, and more fry...

If you find yourself with a lot of fry, start separating males from females as soon as you can tell the difference. Otherwise your fry will start having fry. Fry that result from brother-sister crosses are often sickly and deformed. Crossing father/daughter or brother/sister can be done when working on a strain, but the offspring that result have to be carefully culled so that the vigour in the strain isn't lost.

Never breed from sickly, deformed or poorly coloured fish. Nobody will want the fry and you'll be left with the option of having to dispose of them or sell them off knowing they'll be fed to larger fish. Breeding stock should be strong and healthy, but preferably not bullies. Don't breed from the funny little thing you felt sorry for because she had a bent fin, or the other fish were picking on him. If they do reproduce, use the fry as feeders. If you don't remove them from your community tank they will probably be eaten by the parents and other fish.

My recommendation is to stay away from balloon varieties and guppies with massive tails. I personally believe the practice of breeding animals into unnatural shapes is cruel, whether you're breeding dogs that can't give birth without a Caesarean section or fish that can't swim. Guppies with huge tails are slowed down by the drag in the water, are often picked on by other fish, and develop painful bent spines because of the weight. Balloon platies and mollies can't swim properly and find it difficult to mate and give birth. It's your choice, and this is just my opinion. Please don't flame me for it, I have been flamed for this in the past.

 

[Duck and Dive]

Selective breeding of guppies.

Ground and cover colours: In addition to fin and tail shape, colours play a very important part in selective breeding.
Guppies have a basic or ground colour on which are markings in other bright and iridescent cover colours that catch you attention. The most important ground colours of guppies are: Wild-colour, Albino blond and blue.

Wild-colour guppies have a grey or olive-green ground colours.

Albinos lack black pigments so there bodys are light coloured and there eyes are red.

Blond guppies also have light coloured bodies but the black pigments are not completely lacking.

Blue guppies lack shade of yellow and red and because of this they have a blue shimmer.

By combinining these different colours new ground colours can be created.

Thanks for reading

 

[kribensis12]

Common live bearer's give birth every 4 week's. They can and will store sperm. THere is a rule of thumb you will do well to know. 1 male to every 2/3 female's, or they will stress the female out and kill her. Do not put males together. Guppies are veyr inbred, so do us a favor, if you breed some, try to get them from different stores, as far away from eachoother as possible. Livebearer's lie mollies and guppies need immaculatley clean water or they will die. Guppie and Mollies can interbreed. Swords and platys can interbreed. Swords are very good at jumping, so make sure you tank is coverd. Livebearers do good with alot of Veggies in their diet. I feed mine Nutrafin Spirulina Flakes at every feeding. It keeps color's bright, boost's their immune system, and provides them with essential nutrients. Make sure you vary their diet. Livebearer's do NOT need live food to thrive. It help's, but frozen is just as good. So is freeze dried. But they will do fine w/o any of the mentioned. Make sure you tank is cycled before adding fish. Aqaurium Salt is a good additive to your tnak, as it is good for thier gill's, and i always have better sucsses with mollies when having aquarium salt.

 

[Duck and Dive]

Identifying your baby guppie's parents (when they get colours)

When your baby guppies start getting colours you should look at the tail shape if it matches up with any of the adult guppies, thats one of its parents. You should also look at its colours, if there is a female with a grey body and an orange tail and a male that has a shiney blue body with black dots and a orange tail and black stripes the baby should look like, a guppy with a black section from the end of the body up to the tail and a orange tail with spots and a siney blue body with dots, something like this:

Thanks for reading.

Please post more information or tips to help newbies to keeping livebearers, any tips or info will do.

 

[Duck and Dive]

Please post Tips or info it will help all newbies and they can get their questions answerd.

Raising the fry

If you want to raise fry it is advised to put them in a rearing tank, they will be in the rearing tank until they are big enough to not be eaten by the adults. When they reach this size (by about 6months or more) they should be put in the tank with the adults. For raising fry they will grow better if raised on proper fry food. This is because of the nutrition in the fry food is different to the adult food, fry need a higher protien requirement to grow so there is more protien in the fry food. Fry can be raised on adult flake but they will not grow as well. Live or frozen food is also important to fry to grow so you should feed them something like daphnia or baby brine shrimp.

 

[rmanpf]

how long till fry can be realesed into a comunity tank

 

[Duck and Dive]

Any more tips or info anyone?

?!

 

[dwarfgourami]

how long till fry can be realesed into a comunity tank

Depends on what else you have in there.

 

[rmanpf]

how long till fry can be realesed into a comunity tank

Depends on what else you have in there.

i have six zebra danios and 2 african dwarf frogs, and baby pleco

 

[Duck and Dive]

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