Guppy Not Getting Pregnant?

[OldMan47]

In that case, good luck with them Daniel. I am an experienced breeder and am well aware of the poor advice available on line.

 

[fish48]

if you want them to breed feed them at least once a day [minimum .
feed good quality fish food.

 

[DanielLB]

I hope I am not coming across as arrogant...thats not what i wanted.
its easy to find a variety of confused and different info from the net and local fish shops. but since i often have problems with my nitrite levels beacause (i presume) of overfeeding (not overstocked as only 3 fish) what do you guys suggest? also old man, does it take time for guppies to get acquanted? or do the breed like rabbits as soon they are put togther? and do fish show signs of 'starvation' thanks guys

 

[Paradise3]

I feed mine once a day and they reproduce plenty for me. I have lot's of fry that are growing up atm, infact my females are pregnant again. Guppies will breed straight away if the females aren't already pregnant. One question i have not seen asked is...... Did you cycle the tank?
If you didn't cycle the tank then this could be the reason for the nitrite levels being on and off.

~AJ~

 

[justbinB]

If you're fish are only being fed that often, I think it's unlikely that any fry you do get will live very long.... They will quickly become a dietary supplement to your fish. I have a 20 gallon with 18 endlers livebearers and 4 ottos, and with weekly water changes all my levels are well below the acceptable range with twice daily conservative feeding (only what they eat in about 1.5 minutes). I suspect your tank isn't fully cycled if it fluctuates that much.

The worst thing you can do on this board is not listen to OldMan and other members like him, they know what you are talking about. Be careful about the info you get offline, these are the same people who tell you bigfoot's lurking in your backyard, the world's gonna end in 2012, and whatever else you want to hear. The members here specialize in fish, yahoo answers can't say the same thing. Oh, and all my fish are breeding like mad, which is why I have a few too many at any given time! *(adding the last sentence is the reason for the edit)

 

[omega59]

A dark gravid spot does not mean the fish is pregnant, it could be her natural colour.

 

[DanielLB]

My tank was fully cycled before i put my fish into it. if i remember correctly it took nearly 2 months to cycle. and as my LFS is nearby i got them to test my water (for free) nearly daily lol. also when i do my water changes i also buy it from my LFS. so i doubt (and hope) that it was never fully cycled. would there not have been more signs if that is the case (as it has been set up/cycled since august)and no deaths etc.
With regards to omeags comment, i objectively said that I believed the gravid spot had darkend which was one of the signs in the pinned thread at the top of the forum - is it likely the the spot could darken with age/mood?
thank you

 

[Paradise3]

You still need to up the feeding to at least 1 once a day if you want to see any fry. I don't want to sound like i'm trying to start something but your fish are probably starving. When i got my guppies one of my females was thin and bony.

~AJ~

 

[nessar]

If youre worried about overfeeding just feed smaller amounts, but daily. No more than the fish can consume within 5 minutes. Check the amount of ash in your fish food, if it is high then get a higher quality fish food to help condition them for breeding.

Also it doesnt matter if your tank is overstocked or not, if you increase the ammonia in the tank (like adding the female) it will take a while for the bacteria to catch up in such a small tank. Do you wash out your filter sponges in tank water, NOT tap water? This could be killing the bacteria. I assume you know to do water changes every time you see those nitrites (or ammonia), but thought id write it just in case.

 

[DanielLB]

Thank you for the replies. Yes my filter is washed in the water taken out, not tap water, so thats not a problem. I have upped the feeding but my guppies are no way boney lol! All look like many of the pictures on tis forum. Is boney-ness a sign of starvation then?

 

[nessar]

Yes it is.

Could she be stressed? If she is stressed she could be aborting the pregnancies, or not getting pregnant at all? Is she chased a lot? I've only ever had one male guppy, but he chased everyone in the tank like crazy. Your male to female ratio should preferably be 1 male to 3 females.

Could you get rid of one of the males aand replace him with at least 1 female?

 

[DanielLB]

When i first brought the female guppy i was worried about the ratio as i knew about the 1:3 thing, but i didn't want to buy more because of the tank size. But like i said in the original post, i have never seen the males chase the female. They never give her any attention whatsoever lol! Very strange but all fish act in different ways i suppose. I've upped the feeding and keeping a very close eye on the water parameters so hopefully in 2 weeks or so there might be some progress. finger crossed

 

[Curiosity101]

It could just be that you have a sterile female, or sterile males. Definitely try to improve their diet as that tends to be a good way to get them breeding. The odd blood worm wouldn't go amiss.

 

[OldMan47]

I am not going to comment on the original question since this thread has taken on a decidedly feeding perspective. I find that by daily 'generous' feeding, I can expect that any drop in my guppy tank will have lots of survivors. OK so what do I mean by generous feedings daily? What I do is to feed an amount that my fish will consume completely in about 2 minutes. When they are still moving about looking for food after that, I make the assumption that they are just being greedy but that their hunger has been satisfied. My guppy feeding means that any females allow plenty of fry to survive even when I sell off all of the adults in my tanks every few months and do not worry about it. I know full well that the fry remaining will set me up to sell even more adults in less than 3 months. This is being done in a mere 10 gallon nominal volume tank. I think it takes about 8 gallons to fill it from the level of the gravel bed and I always have at least 15 adult guppies in that tank unless I just sold them all. I am well aware that my stocking in the tank may be considered excessive. I think of it that way myself. I have found that at the 15ish level of adults, the population in the tanks stops expanding and every new drop means lots of fry predation. Once the total population in the tank reaches a nominal stable value, the population explosion slows or stops. Until that level is reached, there is nothing that I can do to reduce the predation or increase the production in the tank.
I have found a similar relationship between adult populations and fry survival rates in plenty of other livebearers including goodeids that has led me to believe that there is something inherently correct about the survival rates that are seen in different situations to come to the conclusion that each livebearer's population density is somehow genetically derived.

 

[noemy]

I am not going to comment on the original question since this thread has taken on a decidedly feeding perspective. I find that by daily 'generous' feeding, I can expect that any drop in my guppy tank will have lots of survivors. OK so what do I mean by generous feedings daily? What I do is to feed an amount that my fish will consume completely in about 2 minutes. When they are still moving about looking for food after that, I make the assumption that they are just being greedy but that their hunger has been satisfied. My guppy feeding means that any females allow plenty of fry to survive even when I sell off all of the adults in my tanks every few months and do not worry about it. I know full well that the fry remaining will set me up to sell even more adults in less than 3 months. This is being done in a mere 10 gallon nominal volume tank. I think it takes about 8 gallons to fill it from the level of the gravel bed and I always have at least 15 adult guppies in that tank unless I just sold them all. I am well aware that my stocking in the tank may be considered excessive. I think of it that way myself. I have found that at the 15ish level of adults, the population in the tanks stops expanding and every new drop means lots of fry predation. Once the total population in the tank reaches a nominal stable value, the population explosion slows or stops. Until that level is reached, there is nothing that I can do to reduce the predation or increase the production in the tank.
I have found a similar relationship between adult populations and fry survival rates in plenty of other livebearers including goodeids that has led me to believe that there is something inherently correct about the survival rates that are seen in different situations to come to the conclusion that each livebearer's population density is somehow genetically derived.

This process you are describing oldman47 is well known and is called intraspecific competition, the population will grown until it reaches the environmental limit, and then it stops growing. In the absence of predators as in an aquarium system this is what happens. (Yes I'm an ecologist!)
But as I read your answer I had one doubt, how much do your adult guppies actually eat and how's their diet? I have platys and mine seem to be always hungry, I put my hand in the tank or simply on the glass and they come swimming crazy "asking" for food. I don't know if I feed then until they stop displaying that behavior or if I simply feed then twice daily a small amount of food.

That's all, sorry for posting a doubt in this topic