Do Guppys Need Filters?

[Vincent]

I've done some asking around other forums and a few people said they know people or themselves don't use filters for the guppies and they live just fine. Is that true?

 

[LauraFrog]

The true guppy is extremely hardy and can tolerate just about anything. When I was a little girl (7 or 8 years old) I kept eight guppies alive in a 1/2 gallon jar, with no filtration or aeration, for 2 years. I changed the water every week.

The ornamental guppy is a different story. Their large fins are prone to finrot and drag in the water. They are highly sensitive and difficult to keep alive. It really depends on what you're trying to keep.

 

[Vincent]

Wow, so it is true that guppys can live without a filter.

 

[kewskills]

Guppy's are hardy, they may survive without a filter but i would not like them too, if you are doing enough water changes a couple of times a week then they will be OK. but why wouldn't you want to give them the best environment that you can ?

 

[Vincent]

I'll probably be doing water changes every week or week and a half if they don't have a filter so would that be alright?

I heard from someone that they have a friend who leaves his/her fish tank in the sun and the guppies eat the algae so he/she doesn't ever have to feed them.

 

[Frollickyfish]

I'll probably be doing water changes every week or week and a half if they don't have a filter so would that be alright?

I heard from someone that they have a friend who leaves his/her fish tank in the sun and the guppies eat the algae so he/she doesn't ever have to feed them.

Personally Id do a couple of large water changes twice a week. Guppies tend to be so in bred that they are prone to illness and its difficult to cure them. The Endlers and Endler cross Guppies I have never seem to get ill though so maybe getting some that have been crossed makes them hardier.
As for the algae I guess they could survive that way but I would have thought more of a balanced diet would be better for them.

Rachelx

 

[kewskills]

I'll probably be doing water changes every week or week and a half if they don't have a filter so would that be alright?

I heard from someone that they have a friend who leaves his/her fish tank in the sun and the guppies eat the algae so he/she doesn't ever have to feed them.

As above i would do 50% changes twice a week if i had no filter (which i would not do personally)
Feeding, I'm not sure but i would think they would need something else except algae to eat like flake.

 

[dunchp]

I started keeping livebearers back in the 80s and I was very, very lucky to come across a guy called Derek Lambert who was one of the top livebearer enthusiasts in the UK, if not the world and did (along with others) so much to advance the hobby. Unfortunately he is dead now. I visited his fish room and he had racks and racks of really rare livebearers in bare tanks (i.e. unfiltered, no gravel etc). I copied him and set up a rack of 9 bare tanks.

My fish did fine but the workload was quite heavy, I would not do 50% water changes, but two or three 30% water changes a week and when I wasn't able to keep it up, the fish really suffered.

So in answer to your first question, yes, you can keep livebearers (including guppies in unfiltered tanks), although I think fancy guppies need a bit of a current to develop their finnage (although I am not an expert in guppies).

Secondly, greenwater is a good source of food for many fishes. I occasionally employ it for my fry, but you have to supplement with another food, you can't feed entirely greenwater. A few months ago, by accident, I got an 'infestation' of daphnia in my greenwater aquaria, this seemed to work very well, although I stress it was by accident so that may be something you might think of trying.

I have a photo somewhere, I will try and dig it out.

 

[three-fingers]

As said, it's recommended you use a filter. As you will know, fish produce ammonia, and this is highly toxic to them. Guppies in the past may have been hardy enough to cope with the ammonia for a decent length of time, but that's about it. It certainly wasn't good for them, and their lifespan and growth rate will have reflected this.

All fish really need filters, some are hardy enough to cope with bad water conditions, but keeping any fish in bad water conditions just because they can survive in it isn't right.

Domesticated guppies you would have very little chance without a filter TBH, wild guppies or guppy x endler crosses are hardier - but why bother going through effort to get these when you could just buy a filter and get regular guppies?

You can get filters for less than £5 ($10), why not just get one?

Otherwise you would be looking at multiple water changes per week, and more space for things to go wrong.

 

[helterskelter]

If you keep just a few fish per tank you don't need a filter, it's only when having large biomass in the tank you need a filter and other items to add extra surface area.

I'm backing up Dunchp as i too know Derek Lambert and he used this technique with livebearers, gobies, and rainbows as his main intrest as well as all the other 1000's of types he kept in his short time.

So basically lots of fish add filtration.

 

[dunchp]

As said, it's recommended you use a filter. As you will know, fish produce ammonia, and this is highly toxic to them. Guppies in the past may have been hardy enough to cope with the ammonia for a decent length of time, but that's about it. It certainly wasn't good for them, and their lifespan and growth rate will have reflected this.

All fish really need filters, some are hardy enough to cope with bad water conditions, but keeping any fish in bad water conditions just because they can survive in it isn't right.

Domesticated guppies you would have very little chance without a filter TBH, wild guppies or guppy x endler crosses are hardier - but why bother going through effort to get these when you could just buy a filter and get regular guppies?

You can get filters for less than £5 ($10), why not just get one?

Otherwise you would be looking at multiple water changes per week, and more space for things to go wrong.

You guys do make me laugh (in an affectionate way of course). One of the things with fishkeeping is that there are so many different ways of doing even the most simple thing that you really do need to 'think outside the box' a little bit. The secret to keeping fish isn't 'must have filter, must have heater...' it is about sharing notes with other people, picking the bones out of it and adapting it to suit your set up.

You make a good point about ammonia, but a filter is not the only way of dealing with it; keeping stock levels low is one (low biomass); frequent water changes is another and the Walstad method is another. No filter does not automatically equal bad water conditions and it certainly does not follow that no filter equals short life span and poor growth rate.

Similarly it is not correct that 'domesticated guppies' have little chance without a filter, I am not sure 'domesticated' is the correct term in any case, but cultivated guppies can be kept in unfiltered tanks. Filtration assists with the development of finnage.

As for your question as to 'why bother going through the effort...', surely you have answered your own question; by going to the trouble of getting hold of decent fish, you get... decent fish. Crikey, if everybody had the 'why bother' attitude, we would still be keeping sticklebacks in jam jars. It is only because of people who 'bother' that we get new, fantastic species and varieties of fish to write about.

 

[three-fingers]

You guys do make me laugh (in an affectionate way of course). One of the things with fishkeeping is that there are so many different ways of doing even the most simple thing that you really do need to 'think outside the box' a little bit. The secret to keeping fish isn't 'must have filter, must have heater...' it is about sharing notes with other people, picking the bones out of it and adapting it to suit your set up.

Which is what I was doing...

I think what's got you started is when I said "all fish really need filters", I really should have omitted the "really" and added an "IMO" after "filters" lol, I sometimes forget that tone isn't so easily conveyed through text.
Ahhh, the wonders of text-based communication.

You make a good point about ammonia, but a filter is not the only way of dealing with it; keeping stock levels low is one (low biomass); frequent water changes is another and the Walstad method is another. No filter does not automatically equal bad water conditions and it certainly does not follow that no filter equals short life span and poor growth rate.

Never said it was...that's why I said frequent water changes would be needed . A filter makes things far, far simpler and safer for the fish - so I would always recommend one and my post heavily reflected this. You seem to have taken waaay more from my post than I have actually said .

Similarly it is not correct that 'domesticated guppies' have little chance without a filter, I am not sure 'domesticated' is the correct term in any case, but cultivated guppies can be kept in unfiltered tanks. Filtration assists with the development of finnage.

"Domesticated" is correct, "cultivated"....the wrong word, though would be correct if guppies were plants .
What I should have said is that most domesticated guppies in stores these days are fairly fragile due to extensive inbreeding, and so have a very low tolerance to ammonia. Without a filter you are relying far more likely to have too much ammonia at some point in time, and with bog-standard low-quality lfs guppies, this will create huge problems.
"Filtration assits with the development of finnage" could really mean anything...what type of finnage? And how does it do this? From the sounds of it, this suggests that guppies are better off with filters. But TBH if the water quality is the same I doubt a filter would make a difference...I'm interested in finding out though .

As for your question as to 'why bother going through the effort...', surely you have answered your own question; by going to the trouble of getting hold of decent fish, you get... decent fish. Crikey, if everybody had the 'why bother' attitude, we would still be keeping sticklebacks in jam jars. It is only because of people who 'bother' that we get new, fantastic species and varieties of fish to write about.

I think you missed my point. I said 'why bother' because it's likely going to be far more effort and more expensive to get decent quality guppies than it is to buy a filter - that's certainly the case for me.
And if your prepared to bother getting decent fish, why wouldn't you be prepared to buy a filter?

Let's get back to the point of this topic - are you seriously reccomending the OP not to use a filter, or are you simply defending filterless tanks because you had them?
Because by no means am I saying filterless tanks are impossible or bad in all cases, but come on, why would you want to have a filterless tank when you can spend £5 and save yourself lots of effort, while providing the fish with more stable water conditions and far reducing the margin of error. Unless maybe in your case when you had 9 tanks it could cost more, you obviously knew what you were doing, but even then "when I wasn't able to keep it up, the fish really suffered"....

 

[dunchp]

Yup. Your points are all good. I must of been having a bad night.

Domesticated is wrong though as all fish, whether they are wild or otherwise are domesticated once they are put in a tank and kept as pets. Cultivated is the term used in the hobby, maybe you are right and everybody else is wrong.

I don't think OP was asking whether I would recommend that he keeps guppies without filters, his question is 'Do Guppies Need Filters?' or is it true that people keep guppies without filters. The answer to the question is therefore 'yes, it is true', but you need to employ an alternative method to deal with ammonia such as low bio mass, the Walstad Method or frequent water changes.