Babies

[GaryE]

A usual guppy brood is around 40 young, so if you're getting ten, they're getting thirty. You could remove the decor on the bottom, as fry that make it through the first few hours tend to survive. They hide to get that far.

It's an awful way to have to think, but many a tank has crashed from overpopulation. We have a local guy who has been in love with platys, and he's just now realizing he has dozens and is in trouble. It seemed so great to him when he had babies appearing so easily, but now the implications are sinking in.

There are fish that will predate fry better than others. Your tetras have small stomachs. Guppies have evolved that strategy of producing millions of young to get a few survivors, and you could end up fighting that. I have stable livebearer communities where they don't overpopulate, breed regularly and go on for years, but with domestic guppies or endler's livebearers, good luck.

 

[jigsyboy]

A usual guppy brood is around 40 young, so if you're getting ten, they're getting thirty. You could remove the decor on the bottom, as fry that make it through the first few hours tend to survive. They hide to get that far.

It's an awful way to have to think, but many a tank has crashed from overpopulation. We have a local guy who has been in love with platys, and he's just now realizing he has dozens and is in trouble. It seemed so great to him when he had babies appearing so easily, but now the implications are sinking in.

There are fish that will predate fry better than others. Your tetras have small stomachs. Guppies have evolved that strategy of producing millions of young to get a few survivors, and you could end up fighting that. I have stable livebearer communities where they don't overpopulate, breed regularly and go on for years, but with domestic guppies or endler's livebearers, good luck.

Yea I get that totally but I’ve also heard that they can store the soerm and have babies up to 12 months later so if like you say they have around 40 at a time then I’m glad only 10 or so survive or I would need a gigantic tank as it is I’m stepping up from 64 to a 125 very soon, but when I see the babies they are tiny and it baffles me why they don’t get eaten

 

[GaryE]

The low survival rates are great for you with your set up. Female guppies store sperm packets and refertilize themselves multiple times, after up to half a dozen drops (their breeding lifetime). You'll see males get obnoxious after the fry have dropped, as they have a very short window to fertilize the female and replace the 'installed' sperm packets before she's gravid again. If the female allows them to, they launch an internal 'sperm war' (one of my favourite fishkeeping phrases) and their packet may remain in place til she can produce no more young.

My experience was there is carnage at about 0-2 days. After that, survivors tend to be ignored. Older siblings may sometimes pick off younger fry, but properly fed adults in a lot of fish don't eat the young once they're viable. They will, however, chow down on other species with glee. It gets competitive between livebearer species in many tanks.