Tips for a guppy and/or platy tank

[neptuneviv]

Hi,

I have lots of experience with keeping bettas, and am really quite familiar with water chemistry and keeping a tank properly. For the time being I pretty much only have bettas, but I have a spawning tank that I'm thinking of converting into a tank with livebearers, for a change.

The tank is a 15 gal, and I'm wondering what to put in it. I find male guppies absolutely gorgeous, but I'm not sure I'd want to have babies. I've heard various opinions about keeping only male guppies (some say they get miserable, others say they're fine), but if I could, I definitely would. I quite like platies, but again there's the issue of them breeding. I know I could probably feed the fry (in rations) to my bettas, but it's not terribly appealing and I have no room to raise babies.

So I plan on setting up a tank and cycling it (empty cycling with ammonia, gotta love that technique), and figuring out what I'd like to have in it in the meantime. So the question is - if you were me, what would you go for? And how many fish in the final count to avoid overstocking and still have a tank that looks, well, fun?

I'm also wondering if it's OK to have sand as substrate rather than gravel. I have sand as a substrate for my bettas, and they love it, what about livebearers?

Thanks for any input!

Viv

 

[wetwetwet]

Firstly HiYa and viv

Sand wont be a problem...(unless you want to heavily plant it )

...and if you want guppies then go for them - if they're kept in a community tank then nature takes its course and there probably wont be a problem with fry.....

 

[kevin007]

yep i agree with wetwetwet, if u want sand as a substrate then use fake plants. i i were u i would get the guppies and the plattys and i would also get some swordtails and mollies to it would be a livebearer tank! that would be cool and i would want some bottom feeder to clean up so i would pick corys cause if u pic plecs, they get too big so if i were u this is what the tank would have:

Gups: 2 male
platties: 1 male and 1 female
sword tails: 1 male and 1 female
mollies:1male and 1 female
Cories: 1 panda, 1 albino and 1 bronze

but that's just my oppinion

Kev