Guppies!!! a couple of questions....

13enzene

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Oct 16, 2008
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Ok so today I got 4 guppies and I have just a few questions about them. Ok first off do they normally stay at the top of the tank? Mine seem to be grouped at the top of the tank since I let them go into the tank.

Also I hear that they are suseptable to disease, what diseases are we talking about? Ich, velvet?

Thanks for the help oh and their tank mates are 5 black skirted tetras.
 
My guppys were at the top alot but I would still test your water parameters. How warm is the tank? What kind of filtration? They definately like to school together so that is normal. Are they hungry? I had guppys for years and never had an illness except for old age. They need good filtration and clean water and you will have a million guppys. LOL I don't know about tetras. Are the tetras picking on them?
 
Water is good temp is around 78, HOB filter for a 30 gallon (tank is a 20, the filter does the 3 times per hour or whatever it is supposed to be I made sure of that) and when I put food in they aren't interested. They just seem to float at or near the top in a group. I thought from looking at the tanks in the lfs they would be a bit more lively..... oh well maybe they need to get used to the tank.
 
Guppies will just hang quietly when they are scared. Not run away or get eaten scared but tentative scared. They don't know what to do and are just sitting waiting to see.

Chances are in a day or two they will settle down, do some exploring and start to eat.

A lot of it comes down to personality.

I have a couple females I can't put in a tank by themselves to drop, they just get so scared, but if I put one or two of my young half blacks in every is just fine, I use them because they don't eat fry.

I wouldn't breed the nervous ones if I didn't have to. A lot of that behavior just comes down to genetics.

But in any case, it's pretty common for them to just hang and scope things out for a day or two when coming to a new home.

As far as diseases, yep guppies can get all of the common ones. I don't know that they are a lot worse than other fish. Sometimes I think the mass raising and transportation and such that is common with them cause the guppies at the fish stores to have more problems when you buy them than some other fish.

I think they probably have fewer problems with parasites than some other fish. But most people never treat or are aware of parasites since usually they don't cause obvious symptoms. Jungle makes a great parasite treatment (parasite clear) that it's worth it to just routinely treat new fish during their month or so of quarantine and get rid of the gill flukes and worms and such.

Marv
 
Ok I wasn't too worried seeing as they did just get moved from the store to my tank but I just wanted to check. Ya I have heard that Guppies can be fairly hardy (that is why I got them instead of Neons) and plus they reproduce A LOT!!! (I would love to breed some) I am sure I will have no problems with that though unfortunately though I got only 1 female and 3 males but when they reproduce I should get some more females and I could use them to breed with the other males.
 
I would get more females ASAP. 2-3 females per male is ideal. Otherwise you risk having your female harassed by the males for some loving 24/7.
 
I try to maintain a 5-1 ratio for my guppies as they are the horniest little fish I have ever seen Seems like they do nothing but eat and reproduce!
 
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