The great guppy escape

[SusieJG]

Well its time for my golden guppy to give birth again and she looks LOADED with babies. During her last 2 pregnancies we put her in a breeding trap since she is particularly aggressive toward her fry, and it seemed to calm her down significantly. Last night I transfered her into the trap but when I went down in middle of the night for a glass of water I saw she wasn't in there. I did a little searching and she was hanging out in her "usual" sleeping spot as if nothing unusual happened. She hadn't looked stressed in the trap or when I found her a few hours later after her escape. Since she has particularly beautiful babies and the last batch got gobbled up by one of my crazy gourami soon after their release (at 3 wks) I really want to save the upcoming batch. So I put her in the trap a second time and this time covered the openning at the top with a small piece of netting. Other than the usual hating to be put in the net, she didn't seem unusually stressed and settled right into the moss I had laid for her at the bottom of the trap. By the time we woke up she had escaped again. As best as I can figure it, since the netting was only laid over the top and not secured she must have jumped at one of the corners where it was only on loosely. Luckilly she didn't get caught! Today she is acting totally normally and I am tempted to just let her be since she's made it clear that she doesn't want to be in the trap and I don't want her to stress out and abort, but on the otherhand I know that if I don't hold her separately the fry will be gobbled down before they are even fully born! My "birthing" tank is currently acting as a second hospital tank and wont be free for at least another week. Should I risk putting her back in the trap with a thin plexiglass cover (don't worry, there is plenty of air circulation) or should I let her have her way even though I'm fairly certain I wont get to keep a single baby despite the fact that my tank is incredibly well planted?

 

[GuppyDude]

well if ur gunna let her have her way ur gunna have to move your crazy gouramis to another tank or into the breeder. im not sure what other fish are in your tank but if its heavily planted they will be safe against other livebearers.

gl

 

[SnowyzMom]

Susie that's an amazing story. Fish can do surprising things alright. Haven't any advice for you, though I admit removing the gouramis sounds good, but they probably won't like that. Fish fry do seem to be a gourmet snack for alot of fish. Only the fastest guppy fry survive in my 25 gallon since the tetras all think they make great snacks! That's another reason why I'm not letting any more guppies fool around. The tetras get fed well enough without live food! I can say that at first I didn't think there were more than 3 fry in the tank then I found them all in among the plants and rocks at the bottom, where the tetras couldn't get them. Smart feeesh.

SnowyZMom B)

p.s. I wonder if there's a fishy olympics you could enter your guppy in? Either the high jump or obstacle escape course! And doing it while pregnant yet....wow. I remember one of snowyangel's mommas being right stressed out in the breeding trap, she was pacing back and forth and her men were pacing back and forth outside the trap too. It took her awhile to settle down but she sure didn't like being separated from her homies. Maybe your female will settle if you persevere with putting her back in the trap? Let us know how it goes!

p.p.s. if a female had her babies before we could get her out and into a breeding trap we often found the fry hanging around the heater, so we put java moss there, it protected them alot from predation. Then we got a new turkey baster(like a giant syringe) and carefully sucked up the babies one at a time and put them in a fry bowl for safekeeping. You can only do that with newborns, the older ones are way too fast to catch. It looks funny but it works.

 

[GuppyDude]

sounds good