How many babies do fancy tailed guppies have per one female?

Question

I'm just starting a new tank of fancy tailed guppies. My friend just got a 55gal tank with five babies. I want two, i'm getting a male and a female from her and a really pretty female from the store. But my mom wanted me to find out how many babies they have because she dosent want like 1000000 tiny babies!

Answer 1

The numer of babies your guppies will have will depend on a number of factors:
1. What are you feeding them (high nutrient foods, live foods, higher protein foods could lead to more babies)
2. How old are the parents (the first few groups of fry will be smaller
3. Water parameters (are you checking nitrites, ammonia, nitrates, etc? If not, you need to be for the health and happiness of your fish)

Second, do you have any tankmates with the guppies? Most other fish will eat the fry unless you have hiding places for them (loosely piled rocks, floating plants, breeder grass etc.). So if you have any tankmates (mollies, platys, tetras, barbs, etc. ) most of the babies will get eaten so it won't matter how many fry they have. In my experience, guppy parents are not as dangerous to the fry as other fish are. They will eat them, but more babies will survive without help than with other livebearing species such as mollies or platys. If you have gravel, some of the babies will hide in that and survive if you only have guppies in the tank.

If you only have guppies, expect a population explosion. Lets go conservative, and say out of the first 2, 10 fry survive. Half of them are female. So now you have 6 females (including the parents). Those 6 then have babies in a few months (60 fry now) and then in a few months, 30 of those are female leaving now 36 females, 360 babies in the next batch... You could have hundreds of fish in a year that way.

If you want to breed guppies, plan on having the mother have the babies in a small breeding net and then immediately remove the mother. Let them grow to a size where they cannot fit in the other fishes mouth then release them into the tank. You can save a few or all of them, depending on how many you want. I would not recoomend putting 2 guppies in a 55 gallon and letting them go wild. The population will get out of control. I'd keep it with some other fish that will act as population control by eating some of the babies. Guppies are very prolific breeders.

Going away from the conservative guess... a guppy can have between 2 and 50 babies per group, as someone else. It depends on a lot of things.

Answer 2

Guppies may have up to 50 babies per spawn and that can happen once a month. Of course, some of the babies always die, no matter what you do. If you have several pairs of guppies together in the tank and you don't separate the female as she has the babies only a very very few will survive. So you can leave the tank natural and allow nature to take it's course and you won't have too many babies around.

Answer 3

In my experiance a female guppy can have around 100 babies every 4 weeks. Even without keeping a male in with her.
I've been over run by guppies with 3 females. Over 200 fish in little over 2 months. I ended up with a disease that wiped out half of my fish.

I now have about 20 females and a bunch of males in a 75 gallon tank along with a Dwarf Gourami who will help keep the fry under control. I just noticed that I have around 50+ fry that just appeared a few days ago.

Have fun.

Answer 4

This Site Might Help You.

RE:
How many babies do fancy tailed guppies have per one female?
I'm just starting a new tank of fancy tailed guppies. My friend just got a 55gal tank with five babies. I want two, i'm getting a male and a female from her and a really pretty female from the store. But my mom wanted me to find out how many babies they have because she dosent want like...

Answer 5

A lot!!

The female guppy has drops of between 2-200 fry, normally about 30 to 60.

http://guppyplace.tripod.com/Facts.html

Answer 6

A guppy usually has about 30 babies but they can have more as they mature. But once impregnated will have babies about every month. Usually they will give birth 5 or 6 times from one session with a male. She will definitely eat the babies so either separate her from them or give them plenty of hornwort (a fine leaved plant) to hide in.

Answer 7

Im not to sure exaclty....when i was in 5th grade..we had guppies as class pets and it seemed like everyday there were at least 15 new babies.....we had a HUGE tank tho...w/ lots of adults!!!

Answer 8

NO it will not die as it has given birth ,her tail will bent for some days

Answer 9

my female have 15 babies and I know they can have alot.....