Baby Guppies

dortiz24 · Dec 4, 2007

Well, one of my guppies had her babies. Not the one I was concerned about in yesterdays post either. lol One was 'stillborn'. Two got eaten. 6 are thriving thus far. I put some ground brine shrimp and ground freeze dried bloodworm in the tank for them. Oh they are so cute! Will it be okay for me to do water changes or should I wait for a certain amount of time til the fry are bigger?

I left the guppy in the main tank and she did okay having her babies even with other fish swimming around her. The males didin't bother her really at all. I read they would swarm around her. Nope. She didn't hang out at the bottom of the tank either but did hide in the plants. Each time she had one she'd swim out of the plants then go back in to have the next one. She did try to eat a couple of them. When she gave birth I notice a couple of times she practically folded her body together. Hadn't read that one! I'm so happy I got to see it! Now I know what to look for when my other females begin to give birth!

kribensis12 · Dec 4, 2007

Congrats, they look cute!!!!!!

chrisdoesntmiss · Dec 4, 2007

Well done. Crushed flake will also be loved by them

Chris

buddhajo3 · Dec 4, 2007

CONGRATS!!!! My guppy just had her babies too!!! About 45 min ago! i was also able to witness the birth! ill have pics soon. =D Congrats again! i have 9 thriving and about 4 or so got eaten. :unsure:

LauraFrog · Dec 4, 2007

Six fry is a very small number for any livebearer, particularly a guppy?

dortiz24 · Dec 5, 2007

She did give birth to more than that. But 6 was the final number that lived. That has since become 5. My other fish were quick to eat many of them. After she was completely done the grand total, what I witnessed, was 13. Her stomach looks much smaller now so I can't see her popping out anymore. She wasn't very big to begin with. I wasn't expecting her to give birth for at least another week or so. I don't see any odd behavior signaling stress or illness in her or any of my other fish. I do have 3 persistant males however. Could they have stressed her out to having the babies early and in such a small nunber? I already ordered the guppy breeder and baby hide out plants. They simply have not arrived yet.

coryhessel · Dec 5, 2007

my guppy gave birth less than a week ago, i have the babies in a 10 gallon of their own, and the mom is back in my 40 gallon. There's a ton of them, and suprisingly not a single one has died. (I seperated the mom right before she was about to give birth, so no other fish got a chance to eat them). They're all healthy and each one is 1cm long.

LauraFrog · Dec 6, 2007

It might just have been a small drop, but if that's consistent she isn't very fertile... I have exactly the opposite problem, I'm overrun with fry. I had a platy drop 85 fry on me in ONE GO once and platies are considered to be less fertile than guppies... 40 or so fry from a guppy is the norm. But if you weren't expecting her to give birth because she was small it might just have been a small drop. They do that sometimes, which is good when you don't want more fry but bad when it's the best female you have.

Males will chase females when they are close to giving birth. They secrete a hormone that lets the males know that they are very close to dropping. The males will follow the female around so that they can eat any fry that are born (which probably aren't theirs - removing competition) and mate with her as soon as possible after birth so that more of their sperm will fertilise the next batch of eggs.

All livebearers are sex addicts - get used to it. haha.

Being chased by males can stress females, and if they do it about a week out from her giving birth she may abort the fry before they are viable, and then you get no fry. Which evidently sucks. Because they grow so fast in utero (They go from a fertilised egg to a fully-formed minature adult in a month) a few days can make a lot of difference, so if the fry lived she probably didn't have them early, she just looked earlier along than she was because there weren't many fry in her.

CrashingWaves · Dec 7, 2007

Very cool, and congratulations. No matter how many times you breed fish, it seems like you're still always very excited when you see the new young fish

God Bless,
Joshua

LauraFrog · Dec 7, 2007

^ Absolutely. I drag myself out of bed before school, look in the tank, go FRY! OMG! and run around madly all morning, nets, buckets, come on you stupid little fish you'll get chomped.... you get the drift lol.