Hi i am hoping to start breeding guppies in a 5gallon soon ( i know its small) to sell or trade or feed to my larger fish. does anyone know how often they get pregnant and how many fry usually survive. and how many i would probably get after breeding about 3 males and 3 females continouosly for 3 months.
To answer in order:
5 gallons is indeed too small as a breeding set up. Where are you planning on keeping them as they grow up?
If you have a mixture of males and females, the females will always be pregnant. They'll be pregnant when you buy them. They'll be pregnant long after you remove any males. They can store sperm for weeks and weeks.
How many fry survive depends on how much cover you have and how quickly you seperate them from adults who will eat them.
How many you get after three months continuous breeding depends on the above point - how much cover you have, how soon you seperate them. Potentially dozens. As an example, my yellow female has dropped around 20 in the past month. I saved around a dozen. You can't keep them all in a 5 gallon. Mine are growing up in a 10 gallon. I won't be saving anymore.
Fry traps are stressful for the mother and involves being there the instant she starts to drop. Given that a lot of livebearers give birth during the night, this is unrealistic.
Breeding fry to feed to other fish is cruel and unnecessary IMO. There's very little nutritional value in them either.
You won't make any money from this unless you are breeding rare or interesting colour strains and have a dedicated breeding set up. This involves selecting and culling fry as appropriate.
If you're lucky, an LFS will take excess from you. If you're even luckier, they might give you a bit of credit.
