How many guppies in a 55g Tank?

[raynist]

Currently have a 30g tank with about 10 adult guppies and 15 or so 2-3 month old babies. Am going to upgrade to a 55 gallon tank this weekend and move the 30g tank to baby duty. I currently have a 10g planted tank with about 60 or so >1 month old fry. I will move these to the 30 gallon tank.

Right now when I see babies I immediatly move them to the baby tank. I am going to quit doing this soon as I am getting too many babies.

I am going to add a bunch of java moss to the 55g and some other hardy plants and let the babies fend for themselves.

I am adding either 2 Emperor 400's or 2 Magnum HOT Bio filters as well so the tank should be well filtered.

How many guppies can I keep in this 55 gallon tank? Keep in mind that I am just going to let any additional fry fend for themselves in the plants/moss.

--Ray

 

[WILDER]

At a push no more than 30.

 

[sylvia]

I'd go for about 20-25 with about 8 of these being male. This will allow for plenty of space for extra fry and also keep a good female to male ratio. If you want to keep more, you can. You could probably fit about 50 guppies in (males - females are larger) without problems. Obviously, all this is without any additional tankmates. What are you going to do with all the fry you are raising? You could keep them by spreading them out over all your tanks but you can't realy put all of them in the 55 gallon...

 

[paulthegreat]

Have you looked into selling them to petshops? I have four that say they will buy my sword fry when they are about 3-4cm and sure of what sex. I do not have any big enough to sell yet so it is a gamble. Otherwise you and I could be in for a bit of heartbreak .

 

[raynist]

Have you looked into selling them to petshops? I have four that say they will buy my sword fry when they are about 3-4cm and sure of what sex. I do not have any big enough to sell yet so it is a gamble. Otherwise you and I could be in for a bit of heartbreak .

I will probably keep some of them and give away others. I already have several people that want some of the babies.

I thought about selling them to the pet shops, but was unsure if they would really want them.

I could alway just feed the excess to my oscar!! Just kidding, my wife mentioned that, but I would not want to do that to something I raised.

--ray