Guppies Offspring

[chrisodapz]

hi all,

I have guppies that keep having loads of babies and where i started off with 1 male and some females now that i have had several occasions of babies where alot survived each time so now i have alot more guppies and more males its getting out of control and so many males are after the females all the time. im not sure what to do with all the males and so many offspring. Any suggestions would be great.

thanks in advance

 

[fluttermoth]

Ring around your LFSs and grovel. Or make friends with someone who has an oscar....

 

[brian2708]

Ring around your LFSs and grovel. Or make friends with someone who has an oscar....

 

[eaglesaquarium]

Ring around your LFSs and grovel. Or make friends with someone who has an oscar....

Its the way of nature...big fish eats little fish if he can catch up to it!

 

[fluttermoth]

Yeah, I know it sounds horrible...but the reason livebearers have evolved to have so many fry is precisely because so many of them get eaten in the wild.

Guppies aren't as bad as some of the other livebearers (swordtails, platies and mollies are terrible for this) but most of them will quite happily give birth, turn around and eat their own fry a second later.

In the safety of our tanks many, many more fry survive due to the lack of predators. With the best will in the world, it's very, very few of us who have the tank space to raise all the fry properly.

At least being eaten is fast and painless; better than a life being stunted and deformed due to lack of space. IMO.

 

[StandbySetting]

With regular water changes stunting can be prevented, fish secrete metabolites, these are the hormones that stunt growth and frequent water changes can prevent the stunting, the best thing you can do is dispose of the fry if you can't sell them, you don't want inbreeding occurring, because then the founder effect can occur, you'll end up with deformed off spring which are susceptible to disease.