Says Guppies Can Be In Marine Water!

[mcdanielnc89]

This Site says they can be in marine water!!!!

http/www.reference.com/search?q=guppy

 

[K.J.]

I can't see how guppies can be marine.

 

[Arimus]

Given the source is Wikipedia I would want alot more proof before I decided to lob our guppies into a marine tank....
And suspect even if they could they'd end up being dinner for most marine inhabitant

 

[kpintheshed]

same here i can't see a guppy in a marine tank

 

[andywg]

Guppies can indeed be acclimatised to sea water, and I seem to recall reading in an ichtyological reference book they can be kept at close to 200% sea water. It might not be the most natural for them, but it can be done and they seem to live quite well.

 

[mcdanielnc89]

wow, that's sweeeet. I knew i loved guppies for some reason, Now I'd just have to have the right kind of marine fish that would'nt eat them for dinner. HAHAHAHA

 

[Arimus]

If it has been cited elsewhere then I'll accept it, I'm just scepticle of alot of wikipedia which does not cite peer review journals or other recognized works.

 

[mcdanielnc89]

i didn't get this info from wikipedia..... it came from dictionary.com on the encyclopedia..

 

[helterskelter]

Guppies are found on many islands like Trinidad and Tobago which are many 100's of miles off main land locations, so they defo will acclimatise to marine and travel long distances.

 

[DiscusAngel]

some marine keepers, after theyve cycled there tank keep guppies and mollys in the marine tank to keep the cycle alive. then once they have the fish they want, they add it then remove the guppies and molly to freshwater or brackish

 

[smithrc]

we've kept a molly in our nano... might try a couple of endlers now

 

[Miss Wiggle]

it's absolutely true, same goes for a lot of similar livebeareres.

all sorts of fish that you wouldn't imagine can be acclimitised to marine conditions, nmonks has a decent list somewhere but there's a lot of cichlids that can taek it quite happily.

our lfs had a marine opaline gourami once, some idiot decided to change his tank over to marine but gradually upping the salinity and wiating for his tropical fish to die off because of it anyway all the fish died except for one opaline gourami who lived through it perfectly happily, he ended up taking him to our lfs

 

[Rillan]

I dunno. Wouldnt try it personally.

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

Personally i wouldn't put guppys in a marine tank, most guppys found in petshops come from long strains of guppys which have been bred and produced in freshwater conditions for decades, i'm sure all this breeding in freshwater would have made guppys lose some of their tolerance to marine conditions, kinda like how fancy goldfish cannot tolerate freezing temps due to having been bred in aquariums for so many hundreds of years.

I think the real test would be to see how long guppys live in marine conditions and whether they suffer from any deseases etc in such conditions- i've had guppys live for just over 2 years in freshwater conditions in a good state of health (which must mean that guppys are suited to such conditions if they can live out their natural life expectancy in them), i wonder how long they live for on average in marine conditions?
The only problem with this is getting hold of guppys with good genes, as a lot of guppys are very inbred now days and so don't tend to live out their natural life expectancy either way regardless of what conditions they're kept in.

 

[andywg]

Personally i wouldn't put guppys in a marine tank, most guppys found in petshops come from long strains of guppys which have been bred and produced in freshwater conditions for decades, i'm sure all this breeding in freshwater would have made guppys lose some of their tolerance to marine conditions,

I would expect evolution takes a lot longer than a couple of decades, however some research appears to indicate that inbreeding reduces the ability of guppies to handle salinity, though I would attribute that to the perils of inbreeding rather than any form of rapid evolution occuring.

One common decision on whether conditions are suitable for a fish are whether it breeds or note. In regard to this I noted in an abstract:

Females that stayed in 150% sea water (58.5%) for 30 days had embryos in their gonads.

J. Chervinski (1984) Salinity tolerance of the guppy, Poecilia reticulata Peters Journal of Fish Biology 24 (4), 449–452.