breeding guppies?

Question

What is the best method to breed guppies? What is the mating cycle? How many fry will come out of one brood? How do you sex the fish?

Answer 1

Sexing guppies is really easy. If you look at the bottom of the fish's belly you will see a small fin. If it's thin and pointed, that's a male guppy. This is a picture of what I mean:
http://www.aqualandpetsplus.com/Livebe6.jpg

If it looks like a normal fin, it's a female guppy. You can normally expect 2-3 dozen babies from a single brood, but brood of over 100 have been recorded. As for the mating cycle, the males mate as often as the females will allow, but a female can have several broods from a single mating. Expect her to deliver about 28 days after mating, but this can be off by a week either way easily.

Here's the method I use to breed quality guppies. Not saying it's the best, but it's what works well for me.

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 you 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!

MM

Answer 2

I've bred a bunch of guppies and it's not as hard as you think. Basically you need to have some structure in the tank where the fry (babies) can hide from mom and dad after they are born. Some dense plants, or something that they can swim into or underneath will be fine. As they grow they will be more self sufficient. When I feed them I use flake for the big ones and drop an algae or veg. wafer, crumbled, into the tank for the small ones so they can feed at the bottom as the large ones feed at the top. Eventually they will all feed at the top as they grow, but this just gives the fry a better chance without becoming a meal for the bigger fish. If you have a secondary tank it might help to transfer some of the fry there if your existing tank gets too crowded. Hope this info helps.

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