my guppy just had babies and there in a breeding box now, and have plenty of room, and im feeding them finely crushed flakes and some egg yolk....when can they swim in the big tank again? (alone, not w/ other fish yet)
and does anyone know the sizes and how long it takes for the babies to get big?
2007-01-07 16:14:53 · 5 answers · asked by Anonymous in Pets ➔ Fish
With your care, the babies will grow quite rapidly and should be big enough in about six, maybe 8 weeks to reenter the main tank.
There are several ways to avoid using a breeding box when you are trying to preserve some of the young guppies. My favorites are using a small netted area to allow the babies to swim freely in and out and keep the adults out. And my real favorite is to use duck weed. It is a small three or four leaved plant about the size of the end of a pencil and floats on the surface of the tank providing lots of hiding places for the fry to avoid the adults. It also filters and breaks up the light coming in from the fixture at the top of the tank, giving it a more natural appearance. And it is available free at any frog pond in the neighborhood and of course fish supply stores. The only draw back to duck weed is that it reproduces very rapidly and with an aged tank, it will be necessary to thin it at weekly intervals.
2007-01-07 17:24:54 · answer #1 · answered by MT C 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋
In general, when the babies get to be about 1/2 inch or so, they are big enough to swim with the big guys. I have a big tank, 25 gallons, and I buy "feeder guppies" from time to time to increase the genetic pool in the tank. I started my tank years ago, with a dozen guppies, 3 male and 9 female. initially, when I noticed a pregnat female, I separated it into a second tank and used a breeder tank to keep the adult female separate from her offspring. Since my tank is so big and the population is relatively large, I no longer use a separate breeding tank to separate the adults from the offspring. These fish are carnierous, they wll hunt the young as any other to feed. My population seems to have stabalized (without breeding tanks) to about 70-80 adult guppies. I have many plants and hiding places in the tanks to improve the babies chances of survival from being hunted by the adults. The problem with a self-sustaining tank as I have is inbreeding, which promotes genetic defects, hence the addition of new genes into the gene pool from time to time with the dozen or so feeder guppies I add to the tank every few months. I love watching these fish now that I have a stabalized population. It has taken me a couple of years to obtain the balance. The areas of hiding places are just right to allow enough babies to survive to become adults, and the adults breed, and the cycle continues. Currently, I have 1 really big female, almost 3 inches long, who seems to be in charge of the tank population. The bigger the tank, the more hiding places, the less you need a breeding tank to separate the adults from the babies, and so it goes, unless you are trying to breed them intentionally to change inherited charactistics, in which case breeding tanks ar a necessity to separate the offspring so they will not be hunted by the adults. If it bothers you that they will eat their own young, then cultivate something else in your tank. The simple truth is all fish eat other fish, their own or not, makes no difference in the grand scheme of things. Darwin was right, the fittest to survive, do. And if that means eating their own offspring, then so be it. Spiders do the same, hunt and eat anything considered prey, regardless of parentage. We're talking pure hardwired hunting instinct in the brain the size of a pinhead or less.
2007-01-08 01:08:17 · answer #2 · answered by rowlfe 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
within 6 months they grow to their ful size but they can swim in big tank within 2 months
2007-01-08 04:06:06 · answer #3 · answered by Tina B 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋
the larger the area they have to grow in, (without being eaten by anything else) the faster they are to grow... Separating them even more like into one gallon tanks will seem hectic, but will give them more room to grow.
(hope this makes sense)
2007-01-08 00:20:07 · answer #4 · answered by enyates2002 3 · 2⤊ 0⤋
I dont know, but a great fish website is www.tetra-fish.com. they will answer all your fish questions.
2007-01-08 00:16:40 · answer #5 · answered by ? 4 · 1⤊ 0⤋