Guppy tanks

[Big Dreamer]

Anybody breed guppies?
Does anyone have a low-tech tank setup?

 

[Longhorns&Chickens]

I have a 30 gallon tank full of guppies! I wouldn't call myself a breeder, mine do that all on their own! I just have a heater and a filter, nothing fancy, and they do fine. I have way too many guppies and I'm always giving them away. I have an algea eater and a pleakastomas (sp?), a Betta and 2 tetras in with the guppies, they help me a little with population control. I think guppies are some of the easiest fish to care for, they don't require anything fancy, just water

. If you want the babies to do well, mine seem to like the live plants, and I would recommend lots of plants for easy hiding. Have fun with your fish!

 

[mangled]

We have a 50 gallon bow front aquarium that is FULL of guppies. Like the poster above, I'm always giving them away. We just have a filter and a light, no heater or anything. The babies do like to hide down in the rocks and plants, so make sure you get them lots of plants.

I actually have to be very careful when I siphon the tank, because I always sucks up babies. I have to siphon small amounts ata atime and then fish the babies out with a net. Last time I siphoned, I found about 40 babies. I placed them in a breeder net, and we freecycled most of them.

Good luck! We get some really fancy tails on the males.



Blessings-
Em

 

[EweSheep]

I have alot of problems breeding guppies, they never seem to stay alive after a year and rarely we ever had babies. All the guppies we got from are the pet store except for the trio I got from the pet store in Champaign that buys from local breeders. He was a goreous German------ guppy and the males were beautiful baby blue with some pink. I've tried to get all the blue mosaic females for this German guppy and got a few sons. Now I have a pair left out of six guppies we had.

We have platys now. Nope, they dont breed either but they are the "rats" of the acquarium now.

 

[xchairity_casex]

i used to breed guppies but got out of it becuase it was simply takeing up too much time and space! i used simple cheap 10 gallon and 1 gallon tanks i never used a heater or filters and my guppies were very hardy BUT i did do weekly and daily water changes depending on the tank. some people prefere bare bottomed personally i had the hardest time keep this clean in the fry and juvy tanks i was litterly emptying the tank everyday and scrubbing it with a brush only to have it be murky and grey the second i refilled it with clean water.

i had all my store bought guppies in one 20 gallon tank with no filter or heater just an air stone (my room however was kept in the 80s for my other pets all year round) and i would do about 70 percent water changes weekly. people have there own opinions about water changes some say not to do large oens some say its ok ive never lost a fish from large water changes and ended up with very very hardy fish so i think it all depends on your what your comfortable doing. when a female was ready to drop i would move her into a heavily heavily planted half gallon bowl with an air stone once i seen the fry swimming around she was put right back into the main 20 gallon since i had about 10 females i would always have about 3 bowls and air stones/pumps.

i would keep the fry in this one gallon bowl for about a week doing daily water changes and feeding heavily about 9 times per day before they would be sexed and seperated males in one ten gallon tank with a bubble wand females in another 10 gallon tank with a bubble wand i kept my ten gallons empty other then gravel simply becuase it seemed when the tank was bare they were freindlier didnt hide or school makeing it easyier for me to catch them when i needed to. these tanks had a 50 percent water change every 2 days and 70 percent every other week while they are still being fed about 9 times perday
later on however i did opt to use homemade sponge filters on both these tanksuseing a cheap 5-10 gallon filter from wal-mart and use some clean store bought foam and put it on the intake of the filter the bacteria colonies will build up quick in that sponge so i reccomend just rinsing it out once the water flow slows way down. as for the fry i could not tell at a week if they were males or females i would leave in teh bowl for another week or two.
and yes you CAN tell males from females after a week the females will have a grvid spot the males will not fry your unsire of may have tiny tiny gravid spots or what looks like a bigger tummy but no gravid spot just leave those ones be for another week or two.


now once my females were about 2-3 months of age i would pick out 2 of my favorites i looked for the largest or most colorful ones take two of them and place them with a male i liked or i thought would go well with and put them in a 2-5 gallon tank with an air stone and some plants these tanks would get about 70 percent water change weekly. after i got about oh 2 or 3 batches from those females i would put them in the main tank with the other guppies or sell them. i also never had lids for my tanks yes guppies will jump out but thats usually only nervous fish which is part of the reason that i kept my fry in empty tanks never had issues with them jumping out.

heres a few pictures of some of my guppies

 

[Big Dreamer]

I see you have snakskins? i have a gold snakeskin i think!
Im going to start a 10 gal low tech tank myself,
If your not familiar with low-tech tanks, its a tank with no filters just MANY MANY plants substrate light and fish
the fish create fertilizer for the plants the lights helpthe plants grow and without the filter the fertilizer (poop) gets left there so there is more for the plants. the plants
suck out the ammonia and other things from the water that help them grow and give out good things for the fish to survive
so its pretty much a closed ecosystem! I cant wait to try, i only have a male and female in a 2 gal tank right now, but when i get the 10 setup im getting another pair

 

[xchairity_casex]

should work out just fine with the guppies so long as you do schedualed water changes every week or every two weeks at least guppies are very prone to fin rot and once it sets in doesnt take long to kill the fish which was the reason i opted to do more water changes then to have a filter on as sometimes the bacteria built up in the filter can cuase the fin rot. just takes one tiny tear in the those flowing fins to introduce the nasty bacteria. i never dealt with fin rot personally in the 2 years i bred guppies (might not seem like a long time but i probably sold about 15 adult batches of fish in those 2 years along with countelss fry and juvies) but my bf had a store bought guppy who got its tail nipped and ended up with fin rot badley i tried treating it with peroxide but didnt save it.
another good thing to have on hand when breeding guppies-a betta
as terrable as it sounds you are going to end up with fry who have bent spines or deformities that will not make it but who you cannot leave in with the other fry to die and cuase illness to the rest a betta makes a good fish for culling baby fry becuase a larger fish would not eat them they are too tiny a fish with a severe deformity usually will nto last mroe then a few days simply becuase they are unable to swim properly and get enough food.

what i suggest is deff stock up on a few tanks! guppy breeding can deff get out of hand! when i started breeding i had 2 20 gallon fish tanks and 2 ten gallon fish tanks and one 5 gallon tank by the end of it i have an 80 gallon,5 20 gallons, 8 ten gallons and close to 15 one -5 gallon tanks almost all but the 80 gallon housed guppies at one point or another i actually just got rid of my very last batch of guppies about 3 weeks ago they were gorgeous the males had cobra markings on the body and solid black tails the females just had the solid black tails.

and your sort of correct on my guppies markings they are not snakeskin but cobras cobras body markings are bars going up and down snakeskin pattern is almost like a girraffe with little squares though sometimes they are more like squiggles like the picture (this is not my fish btw)

this fish is a cobra

see the bars?
i only know that becuase i was told by a guppy show judge who tried explaining to me the differance of some guppy strains

 

[OtterCreekRanch]

I used to have a couple of lines about 15 years ago. One color I worked on a lot and then sold to a local pet store and has since became a very popular color for pet stores in the area. I wish I had pictures. They had a nice icy blue body that got darker as it went back with a bright red orange tail. Mine had nice big delta tails but the ones I see now are pretty sad in comparison. Then I had a line of Blue Moscows. I bought them from a fellow at a fish show. He sold me a pair out of his most winning line. They were pretty fish.

I had a pretty simple tank set up. My main tank was a 70 gallon that was naturally planted. I kept my all of my female guppies in there that I was not breeding. Young males were also in there but most of them were culled by breeding age, so the females that were in there rarely got pregnant. If they did have babies in the tank I did not fish them out so most of them didn't get past big enough to not be eaten unless they were smart and stuck to the plants. If they got big enough to not be eaten I sold them to a local pet store as they were usually just mixed colors. Then my breeding tanks were very minimal 10 gallons with a simple filter and in the winter a heater. No gravel so it was very easy to clean. I had 6 of these set up. I kept 2-3 of my better males and 5-6 of my better females in each tank. Then I had 2 20 gallon nursery tanks. The females had a birthing net in their tank and when they were done I would take the female back out and give her a short break in the 70 gallon if it looked like she needed and transfer the net into the first nursery. I would leave them there for a few days and then eventually once I could see they were eating good release them into the tank. Once the babies started to get big enough to consider eating newborns they moved into nursery number two. This is were they stayed until they were big enough to go into the main 70 gallon tank were I grew them out until I could decide if they were worth breeding or not. The nursery tanks were also very minimal. Nothing but an aerator and heater if needed. No filter, but I did cycle the water with that in the 70 gallon pretty often to keep it clean. I found filters sucked up to many babies unless they had fine mesh over the opening and then it didn't really filter any larger particles anyway. The 70 gallon had some expensive filters that my dad bought when he had some rare cichlids, so the water stayed really clean in it. I always used that water to clean the smaller tanks and then refilled it with new water. That way all of the wish were in similar water so there was no shocking them by moving them around a lot.

I've thought about getting back into guppies but I sold all of my equiptment and its pretty expensive to start over and I just don't have the money. Maybe someday.

 

[EweSheep]

I used to remember having pale pinks and pale baby blue mos. tailed males, they were beautiful. Also the pink neon tailed guppies too. Now the pet stores are pitiful examples and I was not happy with the colors. Popular ones are the yellow/silver, black and blue tuxedos.

It is hard to get into the colors that I wanted in the blue and pinks I used to have. I don't htink there is any breeders left that raises them. It was back in the 80's when I got guppies.

 

[onthespot]

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