Guppy Breeding. (Where I use the name Guppy, Endler can be substituted)
Just a description of my technique that may help some of you.
I write this under the assumption that you will be using a small dedicated guppy breeding tank although you can do it in any community tank that contains NO fin nippers etc.
Let me start by saying that to breed these pretty little fish, you don’t need much more than a tank with good water qualities and A few plants (fake or real, makes no difference) to provide a natural environment, and a pair of Guppies, 1 male, 1 female. It usually helps if they are different sexes, A few times I have been asked why someone’s guppies aren’t breeding and they have both turned out to be males!!
**Something to note when buying Female Guppies…. Most shop bought Females are at ‘Adult’ stage now, i.e. more than 4 months old, and are ready to breed. If you look closely at Females in your local LFS, you may notice that their Gravid Spots (Dark area just behind stomach area) may be swollen and enlarged; this usually means that they are already carrying fry. If the area is very small, she may be just carrying unfertilised eggs. The drawback being, if you want a ‘fresh female’, your going to have to source a young one from a breeder/friend etc. and grow her on a bit**
So, assuming that you have your tank set up the way you want it, your water quality is up to standard (water quality is equally important whether it’s a 49p or a £49 fish) it’s time to add your Guppies.
It’s a personal choice, but I always release the female/s first, giving them 15-20 mins to explore their new surroundings and suss out some hidey holes before releasing the male/s.
To be honest, that’s about all you can do for them now, apart from feeding top quality foods. Mine are fed on flake, newly hatched brine shrimp (hatch my own) and frozen bloodworm.
From this point, I’ll assume that all has gone well for you and your female is now showing an enlarged Gravid Spot (see above text)
You may notice that Gravid (pregnant) females will hang close the surface, usually in a corner, and will chase away any fish that come close to her. (My Mollies tend to come up and try to ‘suck’ at her vent) Now is the time to consider placing her in a *LARGE breeding trap. The best way I have found to get her into the trap is to gently submerge said trap and bring it up from underneath her slowly.
Right, now we have Gravid female in your *LARGE trap. You’re thinking woohoo! Lots of babies. WRONG!! Babies are on the way, but do you want to keep them?? Female Guppies CAN and indeed WILL eat their young for no particular reason. Prevention of this can result in all the fry surviving, easy when you know how innit?
Ok, here’s how… when the female has settled into the *LARGE trap (settling in may take a few hours) start feeding her, grind up some flake food into small bits and sprinkle it into the *LARGE trap 2-3 times a day, don’t worry about excess food sitting on the bottom, I’ll come to this bit later. Fish are opportunistic feeders and will eat when food is available. Don’t skimp on the food, yet don’t go mental either! I feed more than enough for a single female with each ‘meal’.
Your probably thinking allsorts now, all this food floating around, possibilities of water parameters going bonkers etc. but the feeding serves a purpose. (As I have said, Females will eat their fry for whatever reasons, I put it down to *‘Trap Stress’) I find that a well fed female will have little interest in eating her fry! Also, the amount of food she consumes takes up a fair percentage of her internal system (My Logic states that stomach will swell and in turn put internal pressure onto womb thus causing less physical exertion of muscles which results in less stressful birthing)
Ok, so you sit there staring at your female in her *LARGE trap in your tank for hours and nothing is happening, don’t panic, Guppies are usually what I call ‘night droppers’, whereas they drop their young at night (probably to give them a sporting chance to absorb the egg sac before daylight and the fight for survival begins)
Chances are that you will look one morning and see your female surrounded by loads of miniature guppies, (the most I ever had was 63 in one batch) Your female will sometimes look painfully thin and this is where most people make the mistake of netting her and placing back into the main tank to save the fry. DON’T DO IT YET!! Leave her in the trap with her babies and feed her as you did before she ‘dropped’ for at least 24 hours.
A slight difference with the feeding now, You can go for one of the suspended liquid feeds for livebearers or use my method, makes no odds either way.
My method involves grinding up some flake food with water to make a fine paste and allowing it to sink slowly to the bottom of the trap, this will leave a ‘cloud’ of very fine particles in the water and the fry will sample some eventually.
Right, after 24 hours, it’s now time to remove the female, Straight into main tank?? Nope!! If you can, get hold of another *LARGE trap and gently net her and place her into new trap for few days, I call this a recovery period (think like this: if your wife/girlfriend etc just had a baby, the last thing she’d want is amorous advances for quite a while) cut her feeding down to 2 smaller meals a day till she puts a bit of weight on, then release her. Within minutes, the male will have found her and will try to start mating again.
Fry Care.
For the first few days, I feed just the homemade flake paste then switch to just ground flakes. At the end of week 1, I feed a few newly hatched brine shrimp to see if the fry will accept them, if they do, then their growth is going well, if they don’t, then I try a few days later, just a few at a time (1-2ml via a syringe, available from chemist/doctors/rehab centre)(rehab?? Well, some members on this forum may use their services judging by some of the posts :ner-ner: )
I release my fry after a month of solitude into the main tank, where the strongest will survive.
Trap Notes size/cleaning
Size:
I refer to the trap being LARGE, I think this way (My logic applied again) if it were yourself and you were walking round a park, how stressed would you get if you were placed in a 9 x 6 (foot) room with no way out?? You’d be more than grateful for an 18 x 12 room, get the idea??
Type:
The traps I use are the quad (4) section plastic floating type with the dividers to separate females and a false ‘floor’ to allow fry to drop to bottom. I buy these units, then bin the dividers and floor to provide a much larger secure area. These units have water movement slits in the sides and base but prove to be pretty useless unless positioned in a direct water flow which in turn creates problems with anchoring the unit. On anchoring, the best thing to do is squash it against the side of the tank where it will sit quite happily unless the flow is too great.
Cleaning out uneaten food:
The easiest way to clean the trap out at any stage (try to avoid first few days of fry’s life though) is to lift the trap out of the water until an inch of water is left in the bottom, then gently re-submerge, repeat till satisfied.
I try to avoid using the cotton/nylon ‘bag’ traps as uneaten food is so much harder to remove from these and water flow is severely hindered to the point of no flow at all, air bubbles can also gather underneath it and create ‘squash’ points in the corners and seam edges.
My set up:
The tank I use for the breeding is a Jewel Rio 180 limited community, Limited to a few community fish and bottom feeders, B/noses, Banjo cats and a few Cherry Barbs.
Tank is planted, sand substrate and just the Jewel internal filter.
I have an ‘in tank’ brine shrimp hatchery that uses heat from the tank water and the air supply is from a tiny airpump I got for £3.
One thing to be aware of, Guppies carry the name ‘millions fish’ for a reason, if allowed, they will produce fry every month (usually 30 or so) for the rest of their life.
Lifespan of a guppy can be up to 2 years, 16 months worth of 30 odd fry a month! Think sensibly, have you got somewhere for all those fry to go to, a lot of LFS refuse to take Guppies now, mine round here won’t have them at all.
Anyways, this is just the way I do things, You may have other ideas, please post them if the differ, the more info the better. Your fish may act different to mine when ready to drop, just keep an eye out.
Please feel free to add any additional tips that you have too.
Thanks for reading and hope it helps
mouse
Just a description of my technique that may help some of you.
I write this under the assumption that you will be using a small dedicated guppy breeding tank although you can do it in any community tank that contains NO fin nippers etc.
Let me start by saying that to breed these pretty little fish, you don’t need much more than a tank with good water qualities and A few plants (fake or real, makes no difference) to provide a natural environment, and a pair of Guppies, 1 male, 1 female. It usually helps if they are different sexes, A few times I have been asked why someone’s guppies aren’t breeding and they have both turned out to be males!!
**Something to note when buying Female Guppies…. Most shop bought Females are at ‘Adult’ stage now, i.e. more than 4 months old, and are ready to breed. If you look closely at Females in your local LFS, you may notice that their Gravid Spots (Dark area just behind stomach area) may be swollen and enlarged; this usually means that they are already carrying fry. If the area is very small, she may be just carrying unfertilised eggs. The drawback being, if you want a ‘fresh female’, your going to have to source a young one from a breeder/friend etc. and grow her on a bit**
So, assuming that you have your tank set up the way you want it, your water quality is up to standard (water quality is equally important whether it’s a 49p or a £49 fish) it’s time to add your Guppies.
It’s a personal choice, but I always release the female/s first, giving them 15-20 mins to explore their new surroundings and suss out some hidey holes before releasing the male/s.
To be honest, that’s about all you can do for them now, apart from feeding top quality foods. Mine are fed on flake, newly hatched brine shrimp (hatch my own) and frozen bloodworm.
From this point, I’ll assume that all has gone well for you and your female is now showing an enlarged Gravid Spot (see above text)
You may notice that Gravid (pregnant) females will hang close the surface, usually in a corner, and will chase away any fish that come close to her. (My Mollies tend to come up and try to ‘suck’ at her vent) Now is the time to consider placing her in a *LARGE breeding trap. The best way I have found to get her into the trap is to gently submerge said trap and bring it up from underneath her slowly.
Right, now we have Gravid female in your *LARGE trap. You’re thinking woohoo! Lots of babies. WRONG!! Babies are on the way, but do you want to keep them?? Female Guppies CAN and indeed WILL eat their young for no particular reason. Prevention of this can result in all the fry surviving, easy when you know how innit?
Ok, here’s how… when the female has settled into the *LARGE trap (settling in may take a few hours) start feeding her, grind up some flake food into small bits and sprinkle it into the *LARGE trap 2-3 times a day, don’t worry about excess food sitting on the bottom, I’ll come to this bit later. Fish are opportunistic feeders and will eat when food is available. Don’t skimp on the food, yet don’t go mental either! I feed more than enough for a single female with each ‘meal’.
Your probably thinking allsorts now, all this food floating around, possibilities of water parameters going bonkers etc. but the feeding serves a purpose. (As I have said, Females will eat their fry for whatever reasons, I put it down to *‘Trap Stress’) I find that a well fed female will have little interest in eating her fry! Also, the amount of food she consumes takes up a fair percentage of her internal system (My Logic states that stomach will swell and in turn put internal pressure onto womb thus causing less physical exertion of muscles which results in less stressful birthing)
Ok, so you sit there staring at your female in her *LARGE trap in your tank for hours and nothing is happening, don’t panic, Guppies are usually what I call ‘night droppers’, whereas they drop their young at night (probably to give them a sporting chance to absorb the egg sac before daylight and the fight for survival begins)
Chances are that you will look one morning and see your female surrounded by loads of miniature guppies, (the most I ever had was 63 in one batch) Your female will sometimes look painfully thin and this is where most people make the mistake of netting her and placing back into the main tank to save the fry. DON’T DO IT YET!! Leave her in the trap with her babies and feed her as you did before she ‘dropped’ for at least 24 hours.
A slight difference with the feeding now, You can go for one of the suspended liquid feeds for livebearers or use my method, makes no odds either way.
My method involves grinding up some flake food with water to make a fine paste and allowing it to sink slowly to the bottom of the trap, this will leave a ‘cloud’ of very fine particles in the water and the fry will sample some eventually.
Right, after 24 hours, it’s now time to remove the female, Straight into main tank?? Nope!! If you can, get hold of another *LARGE trap and gently net her and place her into new trap for few days, I call this a recovery period (think like this: if your wife/girlfriend etc just had a baby, the last thing she’d want is amorous advances for quite a while) cut her feeding down to 2 smaller meals a day till she puts a bit of weight on, then release her. Within minutes, the male will have found her and will try to start mating again.
Fry Care.
For the first few days, I feed just the homemade flake paste then switch to just ground flakes. At the end of week 1, I feed a few newly hatched brine shrimp to see if the fry will accept them, if they do, then their growth is going well, if they don’t, then I try a few days later, just a few at a time (1-2ml via a syringe, available from chemist/doctors/rehab centre)(rehab?? Well, some members on this forum may use their services judging by some of the posts :ner-ner: )
I release my fry after a month of solitude into the main tank, where the strongest will survive.
Trap Notes size/cleaning
Size:
I refer to the trap being LARGE, I think this way (My logic applied again) if it were yourself and you were walking round a park, how stressed would you get if you were placed in a 9 x 6 (foot) room with no way out?? You’d be more than grateful for an 18 x 12 room, get the idea??
Type:
The traps I use are the quad (4) section plastic floating type with the dividers to separate females and a false ‘floor’ to allow fry to drop to bottom. I buy these units, then bin the dividers and floor to provide a much larger secure area. These units have water movement slits in the sides and base but prove to be pretty useless unless positioned in a direct water flow which in turn creates problems with anchoring the unit. On anchoring, the best thing to do is squash it against the side of the tank where it will sit quite happily unless the flow is too great.
Cleaning out uneaten food:
The easiest way to clean the trap out at any stage (try to avoid first few days of fry’s life though) is to lift the trap out of the water until an inch of water is left in the bottom, then gently re-submerge, repeat till satisfied.
I try to avoid using the cotton/nylon ‘bag’ traps as uneaten food is so much harder to remove from these and water flow is severely hindered to the point of no flow at all, air bubbles can also gather underneath it and create ‘squash’ points in the corners and seam edges.
My set up:
The tank I use for the breeding is a Jewel Rio 180 limited community, Limited to a few community fish and bottom feeders, B/noses, Banjo cats and a few Cherry Barbs.
Tank is planted, sand substrate and just the Jewel internal filter.
I have an ‘in tank’ brine shrimp hatchery that uses heat from the tank water and the air supply is from a tiny airpump I got for £3.
One thing to be aware of, Guppies carry the name ‘millions fish’ for a reason, if allowed, they will produce fry every month (usually 30 or so) for the rest of their life.
Lifespan of a guppy can be up to 2 years, 16 months worth of 30 odd fry a month! Think sensibly, have you got somewhere for all those fry to go to, a lot of LFS refuse to take Guppies now, mine round here won’t have them at all.
Anyways, this is just the way I do things, You may have other ideas, please post them if the differ, the more info the better. Your fish may act different to mine when ready to drop, just keep an eye out.
Please feel free to add any additional tips that you have too.
Thanks for reading and hope it helps
mouse
However, I think you should put in there that you technically should have 2-3 females per male, not just a pair of Guppies. 
