guppy babies

ferbiepom

Registered Member
Oct 25, 2005
2
0
0
I have guppies that got pregnant and they kept eating the babies so i got one of those bredder things. I put the female in there for 2 days and she started having the babies slowly and most of them were born as fetuses or these large bubbles on thier bellies. I know I havent done a water change for a while, could it be that or could it be transfering her to the little breeder bin.
 
so how are you supposed to protect the babies from getting eaten. I only have one tank. I also have some live plants on the bottom. Any suggestions anyone as to why thier stomaches are blown up big
 
I saw something the other day that would be good for hiding the babies from the other fish. The frame was like a half-sphere shaped plastic mesh thing, kinda like the kind of thing they make the one-quart strawberry baskets out of. Can you visualise that, or am I just being perplexing again? lol.

Anyway, the mesh was covered all over in little plastic clover leaves, leaving just little tiny spaces between all the leaves. Baby fish could easily fit in, but no adult fish would be able to. Also, part of one side had been flattened, so you could place it right against the tank wall and see inside without leaving a huge gap for hungry adult fish. It was roughly the size of a softball cut in half.

Does anyone know what those things are called? I think they're really neat. >_> And they might be what the topic creator needs.
 
If you keep the guppies in the one tank you need to have covers over your filters and a lot of plants for the babies to hide in. I have guppies and a lot of plants and they just hide. I will find little eyes every so often and as they get bigger they come out and join everybody else. The nets stress out the female, I figure that with out the net you will have survival of the fit and you will have healtier fish. Another thing you can do is when you see your fish giving birth make sure there is food in the tank, she will be very hungry after they drop.
 
if you can put your adult fish into a nother tank do that. i just put my adult gups in a ice cream pale and left the babies alone in the tank. its worked for me. I have only had babie gups once.
 
I'm not an expert or anything, I'll let you know that right now. However, I do have guppies in my 10 gallon tank. There is a link at the bottom if you want to see pics. It's all plastic plants and I have no cover on my filter intake. It's a Penguin Bio-Wheel filter rated for a 20 gallon tank.

A little over 2 weeks ago I had my first batch of Guppy fry. I usually feed once a day at 3:00. The fry were had at night time. I watched as pretty much all but what I thought was maybe 1 fry got eaten shortly after birth. But it's only a 10 gallon and I wanted that to happen. Don't want to overpopulate too quickly, even though I plan on upgrading them to a 20 gall long pretty soon. I believe the first night I did toss in a few finely crushed flakes hoping maybe the survivor could get some.

I haven't switched my feeding other then feeding only finely crushed flakes and skipping the tropical granules or pellets for now. Figured those were too big for the fry to eat.

Now a little over 2 weeks later I did my regular feeding yesterday afternoon and spotted 4 survivors. I'm thinking that may be from 2 births, I've still not researched enough to know how quickly they can have births or maybe it was just one spread out longer then I was watching.

This is just an example that a certain amount of fry will still survive. Don't worry. Unless you have other tanks you don't want them all to live. Also being that Guppies are so common don't count on an LFS taking them off your hands.

Hope that helps,
Curtis
 
I keep feeder guppies for my turtles, and I couldn't stop those things from breeding if I wanted to. I bought a dozen or so when I set the tank up and let them go. I'm sure some of them get eaten but there are so many, I don't worry about it. However, if you are breeding fancy guppies with the intent to keep them, this may not be the ideal situation.
 
Ok, you have now found out why I never ever use those breeder cages. they stress out the female to the point of aborting the fry and sometimes it can cause death to the female as well.
The best thing to do is just let her be inthe main tank or place her in a breeder tank, a 5 or 10 gallon filled with plants and lots of hiding spaces.
Some of the best plants to use for breeding are Hornwort, just float it on the top of the water or Java fern. I use both plants and I haved plenty of fry. Also remember to do regular weekly water changes this will help the fish out and help them reproduce much faster.
 
AquariaCentral.com