Breeding guppies?
- Thread starter lthom
- Start date
I would start off by educating yourself on guppy show stock... you can see what's available at www.aquabid.com and go from there... I made the mistake of buying a bunch of pretty guppies at Petsmart and ending up with drab babies. Get a "true to breed" stock or show stock, and you will enjoy them a lot more...
Thanks from someone whose4 been there!
Thanks from someone whose4 been there!
Guppys in general are easy to breed...You certinaly dont want to buy show stock if you are just looking for feeders...Platys breed like crazy too..
if you keep male and female guppies together they should have little guppies about every 28 days try and keep it a 1:2 male to female ratio so the females dont get stressed. they all breed about the same but the little feeder type they sell in pet stores seem to be better parents than the fancy variety. and on another note the bigger the female the more fry she can have if your looking for quantity
Pretty much any type of guppy is 'easy' to breed. I guess most of it depends on what size you want if you're going for feeders. I like the bigger type, so I usually buy fancy guppies so they'll get bigger. You can also just buy a bunch of feeders and see which ones end up staying alive, then from those you'll probably get a good bunch.
You don't need to buy show quality guppies, but chances are they may be more healthy. I've come accross a lot of unhealthy guppies.
What you should do is try to get them from different sources. This keeps the gene pool plentiful and you'll get better results. Try going to different cities to get guppies. Most of the time, all the stores in the town get their fish from the same source, but they're just taken care of differently in the store. For example, 4/5 pet stores in my city get their fish from the same place. In a city a mile away from my house, of the 4 stores I"ve been to, all of them get from the same place as well. So just ask them where they get their fish from.
Right now I've got some in a 20 long. I've got about 8 adult females and 1 male (this is a cycled tank I wouldn't recommend starting a tank with this stock). They're doing pretty good. Every once in a while use one of the adults as a feeder, and buy a new one.
As for choosing the guppies, I like to buy the females with the largest and darkest gravid spots. This will most likely mean even if she doesn't breed for me she'll likely drop her fry. For males you need to be careful. If you buy older guppes (most say 2+ years) they may not be as willing to breed as the younger ones. Go observe the guppies and look for the one that chases around the females the most, he's eager and willing to help you out.
Thats all I can think of off the top of my head, if you have more questions I'm more then willing to share my exp.
You don't need to buy show quality guppies, but chances are they may be more healthy. I've come accross a lot of unhealthy guppies.
What you should do is try to get them from different sources. This keeps the gene pool plentiful and you'll get better results. Try going to different cities to get guppies. Most of the time, all the stores in the town get their fish from the same source, but they're just taken care of differently in the store. For example, 4/5 pet stores in my city get their fish from the same place. In a city a mile away from my house, of the 4 stores I"ve been to, all of them get from the same place as well. So just ask them where they get their fish from.
Right now I've got some in a 20 long. I've got about 8 adult females and 1 male (this is a cycled tank I wouldn't recommend starting a tank with this stock). They're doing pretty good. Every once in a while use one of the adults as a feeder, and buy a new one.
As for choosing the guppies, I like to buy the females with the largest and darkest gravid spots. This will most likely mean even if she doesn't breed for me she'll likely drop her fry. For males you need to be careful. If you buy older guppes (most say 2+ years) they may not be as willing to breed as the younger ones. Go observe the guppies and look for the one that chases around the females the most, he's eager and willing to help you out.
Thats all I can think of off the top of my head, if you have more questions I'm more then willing to share my exp.
Pretty much the same way you can tell with the fancy guppies. Most of the time the females will have less color. A for sure way you can tell is by the 'finnage' on the bottom side. Go look up a few pics of guppies on google, or even here and you'll see. The males are the ones with the long 'wire-looking' fin and the females are the ones that have the 'guitar pick-looking' fin (yes extremely un-official names). You can also tell if them apart by the gravid spot (dark spot towards the lower bottom of the fish). Females have the gravid spots and males don't (most of the time).
