Always place your heater at one end of the tank, and a thermometer at the other end to check that the water is heated through consistently. A hang-on back filter will be fine for most set ups. If you keep your fish in a large tank bigger than 50 gallons you might want to consider using an external canister filter. The set-up of your tank will depend on your intentions for keeping this fish.
Do you want to just keep them to care for, do you want to breed them, do you want to keep all males or females? Show Tank: Plant the tank up with plenty of live plants, rocks, and substrate. Ideal plants to keep these fish with include hornwort and Amazon sword plants. The type of substrate you choose is entirely down to personal preference. Guppies spend the majority of their time in the middle or top section of the tank. Breeding Tank: Keep your tank bare-bottomed, that way uneaten food can be sucked out easily.
Use floating plants such as Java Moss to create a place for your fry to hide in. The plants also help aid filtration. As we mentioned earlier, if your adult fish are constantly hiding — it may be a sign that they are stressed, they should usually be found swimming in the open.
The majority of people who keep this fish do so because they like the vibrant colors of the males. You can keep one Guppy per 2 gallons of water; for example, you can keep 5 in a gallon tank and 10 in a gallon tank. They can also be kept with other peaceful community fish such as mollies , platies , gouramis , Corydoras , and peaceful tetras.
Keep them away from species such as red tail sharks , barbs, and aggressive tetras. They will nip at their fins. If you want to keep them with other non-fish animals, you could house them with ghost shrimp or African dwarf frogs. Get Your Food Now. Guppies are omnivores, which means they eat both plant and animal matter. They are not fussy eaters and will eat whatever you give them, including mosquito larvae.
Their main diet should be good quality fish flakes. Ensure you choose a product that is high in protein and not filler foods. To ensure this, check the order of ingredients ingredients are listed by weight.
High-quality foods will have proteins listed first for example, other fish, shrimp, and meaty products. To supplement the fish flakes you can feed your fish either live or frozen foods such as shrimp and bloodworms. You can also give them vegetables such as peas, lettuce, and cucumber. Fish stores sell triangular cone feeders which you can use to feed them live and frozen foods such as bloodworms. The fish can then swim up to the cone, which is a little like plastic mesh, and pull food out of one of the many holes.
You should feed your fish once or twice a day, and only an amount of food which they can eat within two minutes. If you overfeed your fish, this can lead to problems with their health and affect the water quality in your tank.
They will need to be fed smaller amounts, more frequently. You can feed them either the same foods as the adults, but crushed up, or you can buy specific fry food. This decorative grass provides an ideal place for Guppies to lay their offspring, and also for the fry to hide out in providing a safe area for them.
Get Your Grass Now. Guppies breed like crazy. They are certainly not shy, and will most likely breed without any input from you. There are lots of different ways that fish breed. Guppies are ovoviviparous, which means that the females grow the fish inside their bodies, inside an egg.
The baby fish use the egg sac for nourishment, and once they have absorbed that they hatch inside the female and the female gives birth to live young. They have a number of tell-tale signs:. It is thought that males are able to determine which females are virgins and which are already pregnant. The male fish makes brief contact with the female and fertilization occurs when he passes a package of sperm known as spermatophores into the females. The packet then splits up into thousands of sperm and the female store this to create a number of broods.
She can have multiple pregnancies from only one fertilization over a period of time. It takes between four and five days from when the egg is fertilized to the embryo being nearly completely formed. For the rest of the gestation period, the fish develop organs. The gestation period is usually between 21 and 30 days. Towards the end of her pregnancy, you may be able to see the eyes of the babies through her translucent skin. As we mentioned earlier, if you have a female and male Guppy in a tank they are likely to breed regardless of any input you have.
You can either choose to put the female in a breeding trap, use a breeding tank around a week before she is due to give birth or remove the female fish once the fry are born to prevent her from eating them.
Instead, make your own larger trap to give her plenty of space to swim. Include holes for the fry to swim out of. When using a specific breeding tank, keep the bottom of the tank bare, and use plants such as Java moss which allow the fry to hide.
Ich is common amongst these fish. Guppies are a very colorful and peaceful fish, perfect for both beginners and experienced fish keepers. They are hardy and make an ideal first-time fish, but also come in a wide range of colors, patterns, and tail shapes which makes them appealing to experienced fish breeders. My tank is gal.
I keep it at Two canister pumps well established. LED lighting about 8hrs daily. Is my tank too big for only 8 guppies? Should I provide more guppy tankmates? Could water alkalinity be stressing them? Any input is very appreciated. Hi Dirk, yes you can definitely add more guppies to a gallon tank. What is your pH? You could also include some plants to help them feel more comfortable. Thanks, Robert.
Maybe you can try dropping the temperature a bit…says higher temps can stress fish out and cause lethargic fish. Drop 1D a day to avoid over stressing the fish out. I have mind down to 76 they are swimming better. If you only have 8 guppies in a gallon there is alot of space unused. And guppies are social and would probally like to have a little more company than they are currently being provided.
While guppies have been introduced throughout the world in attempts of mosquito control and by aquarists, they naturally occur in Venezuela, Brazil and various islands in the Caribbean sea. While they prefer streams and pools with thick vegetation, they can be found in almost any type of freshwater habitat and even occasionally in brackish waters.
Note: Like all aquarium fish and inverts, guppies should never be released in the wild. They tolerate a wide range of conditions and can actually survive in most waters, which means they can be very dangerous to native fish populations!
If want to get rid of your guppies, please rehome them. Their appearance is what made guppies so popular! While females and wild types are usually greyish brown color with the occasional blotch of color, males have been selectively bred to have a wide variety of colors, patterns and fin types.
Their tail fins are often long and flowy. Females can grow to twice the size of males and reach 2. When they are pregnant, a dark spot will appear behind their belly and they will become noticeably rounder. Although they may occasionally have a nip at fish with longer fins including other guppies , these livebearers are generally peaceful and should therefore only be kept with other peaceful species.
They do well with other livebearers like platies, mollies , swordtails and other calm fish that can withstand the higher pH values guppies thrive in. Do you have room for them or a place to rehome them if necessary? If the answers to these questions are yes, you can go for about 2 females to every male to avoid excessive harrassment.
If the answers are no, you can stick to a setup with just males to prevent overcrowding! You can also use lights to increase food supply during your absence as these encourage vegetation to grow. When deciding on which guppies to breed, you should first consider how you want their offspring to look. Breeding together two leopard guppies, for example, will maximize the chances that the offspring will be a leopard fry.
Breeding a leopard guppy with a tuxedo guppy, on the other hand, may produce offspring that displays mixed characteristics from each of its parents. You can choose to breed guppies in their own separate tanks or in communal tanks.
Both have their own pros and cons:. Placing your mating guppies into a separate tank allows you far more control over them and their conditions. The only downside to this setup is that it requires another tank and, in turn, a lot more space and money. When breeding guppies in a communal tank, any two fish could breed to produce offspring.
The other major downside this is where it gets kinda gnarly is that tank mates are likely to feed on fry. Females can store sperm inside them for up to 3 months , which is- ahem… damn impressive. It also means that they can have up to 3 births per single mating session. Whether in a communal or isolated tank, fry should have plenty of cover and places to hide for comfort- and to avoid being eaten by tank mates. Freshly hatched brine shrimp and powdered dry food make for great, nutritious food sources to sustain your newborn fry.
You should always be wary of overfeeding. As your fry grows, you should make an effort to conduct regular water changes in order to maintain water quality and encourage growth. Male guppies have wide, long caudal fins that are typically bright in color whilst females have shorter, narrower caudal fins.
Females, as stated earlier, also grow far larger than males. Happy fish keeping! Some of the most common items are the following ones:. Even so their diet is this varied, most guppies will eat algae in the biggest proportion. This is why many fish keepers will buy guppies for their aquariums. They are great at cleaning your fish tank from algae remains, and other small waste particles. There are exceptions from this though. Guppies that live in different areas of the globe, might have other things in their diet as the main element.
For instance, guppies that live in Trinidad, are known to eat mainly invertebrates instead of algae remains. What does this mean more exactly?
In places where algae remains are more abundant than invertebrates, guppies are more likely to live on algae remains. In other cases, guppies might consume more invertebrates, even if they find these harder. Why is that? Because invertebrates are much more nutritious than algae, and guppies will go for what is better for their health, like any other animal for that matter.
Actually, guppies that live mostly on invertebrates, will have a better diet than those that eat mainly algae remains. Their diet can also be related to the presence of competitors. In what way?
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