That's not a guppy is it?

gsparsan

gsparsan

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Dec 2, 2007
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I had started a small tank with lots of plants, no aeration, no filtration and I put it outside. It also has 3 guppies (2f, 1m). Last week I found a very small fish, almost transparent in the water. There was no egg attached to it. I thought it must be a guppy fry. One week on, it has grown almost as big as the parent guppies. AND it doesn't look anything like a guppy.

I have no experience with guppy fries and I dont know what it should look like but now that this fish has taken form, I am inclined to think its not a guppy. How it got there? No idea. Maybe as an egg attached to a plant

I've removed it from the tank and placed it in a small QT. I've tried to take a picture but its too small to focus on it. Thats the best shot I got.

Can anybody identify this fish?

DSCF0431.jpg
 
The Zigman said:
looks like a feeder goldfish to me...
Click to expand...

:iagree:

If it's not a barb (and I don't think it is) or a cichlid fry, then I think you have a goldfish fry on your hands.
 
You may wish to recall where you got your plants and what fish were in the tank(s) with the plants. That's how I got my "giant dwarf gourami" (pet store has yet to explain *that*...). I was unprepared for him/her, but Lucky Buddy Phrie has grown from barely visible to almost an inch long now (took about 4 months). He/she is the color of a female guppy (kind of boring), but then all the fish in the tank he/she came from (where the plants came from) are the same sort of dull color but no longer than 2", which is good since my biggest tank is a 10G. LBF makes up for his/her dull color by being a personable, friendly and rather intelligent survivor.
 
I got some of the plants from a nearby river source. No gold fish there for sure. Lots of carp, tilapia and some small schooling fish the size and shape of danios but completely grey n dull. Millions of them. I got 1 big anubias from the shop's back yard. It was in a dirty tank with hardly any water in it. It was filled with anubias, all growing much taller than the water. I have washed all plants under tap water, cut off old roots n leaves etc and some of them stayed out of water for several hours. If that little bugger survived all this, it will do great in my tank, once it grows big enough not to get eaten.
 
if there were carp w/ them then I would guess this is a young carp, would make sense because goldfish are so closely elated and they look alike.
 
Given the source of your plants, it sounds like you were very careful to prepare them and I applaud you... but one never knows the lengths a wee fish will go to just to survive. Mine came in a handful of hornwort, but managed to find him/herself in a makeshift nano (about 1G) with a variety of plants and no competition, and survived just fine, particularly after around 10 days in the nano before I could get the mini filter and mini heater (~$25 for something less than 0.25" long...). If he/she had landed in the 5.5G or 10G, the tetras would have eaten him/her right away, I'm sure.

I should have mentioned how pretty your new uninvited guest is, a fine, strong color, not too fancy & not at all dull. Sometimes the ones that show up on the metaphorical doorstep are the ones that last the longest...
 
I've removed him from a dirty, non-aerated, non-filtered, non-heated tank kept outside exposed to weather conditions and placed him in a QT inside, with gravel and water taken from the main tank. If it dies now, that will be the proof that I'm really bad at this!
What do I feed him? Outside, the guppies were living on a regular supply of mosquito larva freshly delivered by the mosquito themselves.
 
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