How do I breed guppies, and what are the steps?

Question

I have been wanting to start breeding fantail guppies. I need some help with the steps and care. Does anyone know?

Answer 1

I have been breeding guppies for years. Guppies are easy to breed. Despite what others are telling you. No matter how many rocks, plants, or decorations you have the babies will still get eatin. I recommend setting up a seprate area for them. You can use a small fish bowl if you wish. Just put a desk lamp over them to keep them warm. I would put pregnant females into a breeding net , let them have the babies, leave the female and babies in the breeding net if it is divided into section for 24 hours, after 24 hours move the female in with the other fish so she can get pregnant again. She will hold up to 3 batches of sperm. After the female is out use a net and scoop out the fry and put them in a seprate container. Feed them often either liquid food or ground up fish flakes. I attached a few websites for you to look at. Feel free to email me or message me with any questions. Also you will know when they are about to give birth because there body will square off. Also just so you know the mothers will eat the baby fry. The 3rd link has step by step directions check it out.

Answer 2

It's easy...guppies will breed in a puddle if you let them..just put a male and female or 3 females in a tank together...maybe some fine floating plants like java moss to let the young hide in...and that's it. they're easy.

Answer 3

For breeding guppies, a minimum tank of 10 gallons is reccommeded. ALWAYS make sure the tank is cycled before introducing fish.(A page on fishless cycling soon.) In a 10 gallon tank, it is reccommended to start with 3 guppies, 1 male and 2 females. For a 20 gallon tank, you can do 2 males and 4 females, and so on... For our purposes we will be going over how to breed guppies in a 10 gallon tank.

Always remember... keep 1 male to every 2 famales. This is very important, as male guppies are randy little fish, and will constantly harass any female around. If you keep too few females, the male may harrass her to the piont of death. If you have at least 2 females to every male, it gives the male more than 1 girl to chase, so at least 1 girl is always getting some rest.

The tank cycling period can take a long time. You can use this time to decorate your tank. Live or fake plants will do just fine. There is a plastic breeding grass that works well for giving fry places to hide. The more plants you use, the better. I prefer live plants myself. Java moss is great for giving fry places to hide. It is also a very versatile plant. You can float it by tying it to a cork... You can tie it to driftwood or other decor... You could stick it to the substrate... Or you can just let it float around and do it's own thing. Wisteria is another plant I reccommend. It is a stem plant that you can jam into the substrate and it will grow like mad. You will also need some sort of floating plant. Guppy fry will spend most of their time near the surface, so a floating plant is critical to their survival. My favorites are anacharis and hornwort. Use a suction cup to get it to stay in one place. There are many other plants that work great. I just reccommended these because they are very easy to care for, and need little to no maintenance, other than the occasional trimming.

So, once your tank is cycled, is it now time to choose your fish. Remember to get 1 male for every 2 females you get. (If you coulcn't guess by now, this is very important.) What color morph of guppy you get is your choice. Just make sure you get guppies that are healthy; no signs of ich, fin rot ect. If they have white spots growing all over them, any kind of fungus, or if the fins look a little bit beat up do not get them. Go to another fish store or wait and come back the next week.

Now that you have your fish, it is now time to introduce them to your tank. Make sure you acclimate them correctly.(An acclimation page is coming soon.) Once you release them into the tank, they will probably go after each other looking to mate right away. But do not be worried if they don't right away, they will very soon.

To get the most fry, be sure to feed high quality food. Frozen bloodworms and live blackworms are greedily accepted, and will make the female guppies produce loads of fry.

In about 30 days it will be time for the guppies to go into labor. It will take anywhere between a few hours to maybe a day or 2. It all depends on how many fry are born, and how stressed the mother is. It may be a good idea to remove the male during labor, and give the females a little bit of peace. You also may want to turn off the lights to help decrease stress.

Once the fry are born, you have a decision to make. You can either choose to remove the fry to a different tank(cycled of course) or you can leave them in the same tank as the parents. The parents will eat the fry if you decide to leave them, so that is why the plants and hiding places are so important. However you will lose some fry, but don't worry, you will have more in another month!

Young fry will release hormones into the water that slows growth. It is very important in the first 1-2 months to change 25% of the water every 2-3 days. This removes the hormones and allows the fry to grow at a quick pace. For the first month, liquid fry food is best, but if you grind up flakes to a powder that will be sufficient. Once the guppies grow to about 1 inch long, you can begin to feed as you would if they were adults.

Good luck and happy breeding!

Answer 4

Breeding guppies really is just as simple as most people say it is but if you really want to be serious about it there are a few considerations.

Tank requirements: You need to have two tanks at least 10 gallons in size. The first one should be cycled and all settled ready for your new guppies. The second should be filled with water and have a sponge filter running. It should also gave a heater and lots of hiding places for the babies. Set up both tanks and keep the temperature in both about 74-78 F, guppies will do well in that range. pH, hardness and other water conditions are not very important to guppies. They tolerant a very wide range of parameters.

Feeding: For the adults you need to feed a good basic flake food as well as the occasional treat of frozen foods. Buy a couple of them to swap between, blood wroms, mosquito larvae, brine shrimp are all good. For the babies you need baby brine shrimo to feed for the first few days and some cruches flake to start mixing in after that. Yes, you can just crush the flake yuou use for the adults.

The Fish: Get 1 male for every 2-3 females. No need to get many, after all you expect to breed plenty! Most you find at pet stores will already be pregnant so if you are really serious about getting just the right color you will need to by from a serious breeder or be prepared to work at it a while.

The mating: Just put them together and they will do the rest.

Once the female is very gravid (pregnant) move her to the empty tank and leave her there until she has the babies. Once she has them you can more her back to the main tank. Feed the babies fairly often, 4-5 times a day isn't too often and change 40 - 50% of the tank water every 2-3 days. The larger the babies get the more often you will have to change water until the babies are adults.

Raising the babies: Feed the babies fairly often, 4-5 times a day isn't too often and change 40 - 50% of the tank water every 2-3 days. The larger the babies get the more often you will have to change water until the babies are adults. Install a tank divider in the baby tank as soon as possible and once you can tell males from females start to seperate them. Most serious breeders end up using two tanks, so you might want to plan on that in the future. Seperate them as soon as possible! Also do not give up on the water changes! They are critical for proper growth! I cannot stress this enough!

Culling: Culling is removing undesirable fish from your stock. Remove any deformed fish you see as soon as you see them. It's not uncommon to have a few deformed fish. Humanely kill these as you certainly don't want them breeding. Once the babies are nearly grown you will be able to pick out the best looking male and best lookig females. This is where color choice comes in. You will most likely have fish of two or three different colors. Return you original fish and the extra babies to the pet store or donate them to another fish keeper, to a school, whatever. Place your best male and three best females in the now empty main tank. and let them do what come naturally. Then you will start the whole process over.

While you are raising the babies, you will have babies from one of the other females too if not both of them. You will have to choose, set up another tank for them or leave them with the adults to do as well as they can. Your call. As you can see, you could end up with tanks all over the house in no time at all, so be aware you can't keep them all! LOL

After a few generations you will need to add fresh breeding stock to your line. Try to find a really good looking male that fits your colors and breed him to some of your females for fresh genes in the line. Doing this every so often will improve your fish and prevent problems from too much inbreeding. Inbreeding fixes traits in the line, both good traits and bad traits, so bring in new stock from time to time.

If you really fall in love with guppy breeding you will really want to be a member of the IFGA (International Fancy Guppy Association). They can teach you so much more than this basic over view and the members are a great source of really superior breeding stock. You can find their website online.

Hope this helps a little and good luck with your breeding efforts!

Answer 5

Guppies don't lay eggs, they have little swimming babies. This makes them VERY easy to breed! Keep males and females in a tank together. best ratio is 2 girls to every 1 boy. When one of your girls looks really big (like she's getting ready to pop), put her in a breeding net. you can get these at wal-mart i think. it's a little net box that hangs on the side of the tank (in the water). this keeps her separated so that the other fish can't eat her babies. make sure there's lots of little fake plants in the bottom of the net so that the babies have a place to hide from their mommy. (she'll eat them too) once she's skinny again, return the mother to the tank. if there's a lot of babies, you may want to put them in a tank of their own so they have lots of room to grow.

Answer 6

here is a website that goes through everything you need to do. But guppies will pretty much breed and have babies really easy.

Answer 7

Cycle the tank. Add fake plants and caves for plenty of hiding spots for the fry. Add the guppies. They'll do the rest themselves.

Answer 8

basically go away them be and that they're going to reproduce like loopy. while the female is particularly great, seperate, any small tank will do. do no longer use a clear out, basically exchange the countless water familiar. feed overwhelmed flakes

Answer 9

Just make sure that you have a male and a female guppy. It might take awhile, but they do it all themselves.

Answer 10

Get male fantails.

Get female fantails.

Lower the lights,put on some soft music...

...Oh,come on. ^^ They're guppies. Put them together and you'll have thousands in their lifespan.