How Many Guppies

[chishnfips]

I am thinking about in the future having a 4ft 30 gallon tank and filling it up with guppies.

I want a tank that is buzzing with life, I was also going to add some tetras in there too.

I reckon I could get at least 20-30 guppies in there aswell as tetras cause I have very good filtration.

what do you guys reckon

cheers chish

 

[SnowyzMom]

The obvious comment is 2 guppy females + 1 guppy male = a well stocked guppy tank in next to no time! Okay, okay....the 1 inch of fish per 1 gallon of water rule is still a good one. Given that a guppy female can birth 25+ live fry at a time, every MONTH, you'll have no problem stocking your tank! Well that's presuming there's java moss or floating plants the fry can hide in, otherwise they're mobile crunch n munch for pretty much everything. I've got 4th and 5th generation guppy adults now, happily mixing with black, neon and glowlight tetras, corydoras, ottos and even some mollies I agreed to take on....as you can imagine there's extra aeration on that tank and I blow thru filters quite abit. Without the mollies I'd spend wayyyyy less on filters. Got to stop agreeing to take on spare fish! However they're all disgustingly healthy so that's something--except the lfs was out on how big mollies grow--they said 3 inches and I've got two that are 5 inches! Anyways, keep a ratio of several females to 1 male guppy, they've got libido up the ying yang and will worry and harass a single female too much. Basically guppies make rabbits look like monks.

 

[chishnfips]

I like the males so I suppose the only way is to have a few females to one male like you say, so what do you reckon, buy a few a and mate them or just buy about 20.

 

[Annastasia]

Buy a few, then you have room and you can keep some fry. Preferably get them from different LFSs though, so you don't get a bunch of inbreeding.

 

[chishnfips]

good idea anastasia, I wouldn't have thought of that.

 

[SnowyzMom]

I seem to always end up with more female than male guppy fry but I do have an entirely male guppy tank and boy it's colourful! It just takes a while to get the male numbers up, that's all. I find it easier to keep them separate from the girls, give the girls a rest and occasionally toss a male in the bigger tank on stud duty. There's enough males in the males only tank that they don't pick on each other's fins like I've heard others have trouble with.

My only thought on buying 20 guppies is that you'll shortly have an overpopulated tank--unless you just let the fry be mobile crunch n munch for everyone else in the tank. However they're speedy little blighters and if they've got anywhere to hide, be it down in the gravel, inside a shell or in a clump of java moss, you'll find them evading everyone and growing up. They're danged cute though.

You could of course just buy male guppies....people do that too.