Guppy Purchasing And Breeding

I'm interested in starting to breed guppies and before I spend a fortune on the really fancy guppies I thought I would try a few from the local pet store. I know my female to male ratio is not right cause I have 6 males and 4 females. When looking for guppies what should I look for? I look for different colors with the males because I like a variety of colors in my tank. I was heading back to the pet shop tomorrow for some more females. Any advice? How long should I expect to wait before seeing my females mate and produce fry? Love to hear from you guys!

Thanks!

If you want to keep and breed nice looking fish then starting with shop fish is fine.

However these will not produce anything specific, your get a mix of colours which could take several generations to fix a colour line.



I keep a couple types of line breed guppies and almost all the fish are very simular
These fish you can get in the UK from about £5 a pair

If you want show quality fish then their many factors to think about. I judge fish to IKGH standards and help to judge fish in the UK
So let us know what your thinking of and we'll be able to answer better.


As for the fry, guppies can store sperm for several months, so until this has passed you cant be sure.
What you should do is keep a female/females on their own until they have stopped dropping fry (4-8 months) once you gone 2-3 months with no fry then introduce the male you want to breed from.
Simpler way is breed some guppies and rear the fry on their own, remove all the males as they develop. Once mature you can breed with the virgin females.

I was looking to do pet shop guppies first cause I dont know much about breeding fish. I bought a pregnant molly and a pregnant platy which resulted in fry that I have in a seperate 10 gal tank. I would love to buy some of the more fancy guppies I'm in love with a picture I saw of a blue metallic guppy. Any help with how to go about breeding two specific guppies would be great because with the males and females I have in there now its kind of a free for all. Thanks!

On breeding two specific fish you have to make sure the female has no sperm stored as i explained already, which can take several months.

she has to be kept on her own with on other males, and once stopped having fry for 2-3 months then you can breed her with your selected male.

You can post the pic of the blue guppy, i keep japanes Blues which are stunning fish i think. only small with small fins but great colours.

This is the blue guppy I was looking and thinking about purchasing. When mating fancy guppies do I try to mate two different ones to come up with a new color or do I mate two of the same kind to keep the strain going?

Also when purchasing these guppys and they come in pairs or trios, do you know if the females would be guarnteed not to be pregnant?

Here are some pictures of my molly fry

the females that u buy in pet stores in mixed tanks r almost always pregnant unless they just put it in there if ur lucky,

The best thing you can to is locate a blue female as the one in the shop will almost never match the males!
I've got true blue females which would be better.

But select the best looking fish and have fun.

I bought 3 males and 2 females yesterday at Petco and I lost a female and male last night. They are going back for replacments. I have had a lot of problems with fish from petco theyve had ick on them twice. All the fish I by from walmart are doing well in my tank but to get someone who knows what they are doing is impossible I actually had to get my fish out of the tank myself because the girl working there couldnt catch a fish and I didnt want to be there all day. I think today when I go back to petco for replacment fish I will be cautious as to what Im buying

ok so you lost two are the tanks cycled? what are your water stats? or did they just die of dropsey or ick?

Selective breeding. Sounds possible... And Petco fish are the pits. I find Wal-mart much better, actually.

Checking fish well before you buy them is always a good idea. There is absolutely no reason to bring home a fish that has any marks on it or is not acting right. That is a sure way to introduce diseases into your own tanks and should be avoided.

Went to venture out to Petco this morning. The male that I lost last night seemed to be acting funny moving and breathing really fast. The female was swimming then floating so I dont know exactly what went wrong. I was fortunate that when I went back to petco they had the guppies and platys on sale 5 for $5. I got three new females I know one is definitely pregnant her gravid spot was quite noticeable (maybe she will have them soon). I also sprang and got an orange mickey mouse platy. Shes quite rounded which made me believe that she to was pregnant but dont see a gravid spot so Ill just keep and eye on her. My walmart has new fish deliveries on Fridays so Ill have to wait till then to check out their new stock. I forsee another new tank in my future. I have been testing the water and my water is perfect. Nitrites and nitrates are good, I have really soft water, and ph and alkalinity are ideal. I use the quick strip test strips. I also ordered the breeding trap that has the v in it I think it would be better and easier to tranfer the fry then the breeding net.

If you have really soft water, your mineral content is far from ideal for common livebearers. They like water that is almost liquid rock like mine. My hardness tests at over 200 ppm, 12 degrees. My pH is also quite high compared to the water you would want for say angels or tetras at 7.8. That soft water with a neutral pH is great for things like tetras, not for common livebearers.
In addition to testing for nitrites, which is better done with a liquid type kit, you should be testing for ammonia. How long has the tank been set up and what did you do to prepare it for stocking?

well i learned the hard way when it came to setting up my tank for the first time. I knew little about fish so i thought you just put the fish in and add a aquasafe and that was it. Then I started losing fish and the woman at petco told me that with a new tank it didnt have the good bacteria that is needed. She told me about this stuff I put in the tank that speeds up the bacterial process and adds good bacteria. I had only these neon colored fish that had survived so I did that then started using the test strips to keep an eye on the levels in the tank. I added new fish little by little and then I had my first nitrate cycle cause the water got really cloudy. Im learning a lot more now that Ive joined this website and I appreciate all the help. Now I have guppys and platys and mollies with my frogs and snails and plecos. When I set up the babies tank I took some of the water from the other tank and mixed it. I dont know if that was the right thing but I figured it had good bacteria in it. Any wisdom you would like to pass on would be much appreciated.

There will be almost no beneficial bacteria in the used tank water. The bacteria that convert ammonia to nitrites and the ones that convert nitrites to nitrates, live on surfaces, not swimming in the water. If you want to give a new tank a jump start, it is best to either use some of the filter media from the old tank in the new one or get some of the surface dirt from the old filter onto the surface of the new one. That is what I try to do to clone a filter. I clean one of my mature filters in the new tank, using the tank as my cleaning bucket. It makes a bit of a mess in the new tank but that tank is almost always ready for new fish in less than a week and sometimes I get in a bind and even do it the same day. That happens when I come home from a fish convention with more fish than I expected to buy.