A Few Questions About Frys

[babybetta]

1] I have about 20 frys [guppies], & to be honest I don't know how to determine their sex.
I heard something about keeping at least 2 female for every male.
So how would I got about determining their gender?
Two of them, the biggest, have been following each other around. They aren't biting each other, that I've noticed, but they are inseparable.

2] Is there a reason why most of the time they are hanging just below the surface?

3] Do they sleep? I feel silly asking this. But some mornings I wake up & some of them are just floating around. I'd assume they get tired since they are very active.

Thanks in advanced.

 

[kat11180]

males tend to have more colour than the females they can also have larger tails but some breeds are very sim the best way to tell is the anal fin on the males it looks like a tube the females do have a normal size anal fin (which is the bottom fin just before the tail looking from the head) when the female is preg she will get a very dark patch in the anal fin area iv found the darker the area the nearer she is to giving birth but not always,it is normal for the females to rest on the gravel during giving birth. the fry are easyer to sex once they are a few month old and getting a good size. guppys tend to spend alot of there time at the water surface (prob cause thats where there main food is and they can eat and eat) and yes fish do sleep but as they dont have eye lids its hard to tell but less movement first thing is a sign they just waking etc and i found that at least 4/5 females to one female is much better but no matter how many females you have one male is always enough to do the job as he will get around and female guppys can die with over breeding so the more females and less males iv found are better.

 

[lilfishie]

you won't be able to sex until at the earliest 6 weeks of age. this diagram should help with sexing them when old enough.

they don't sleep as such but they do partially shutdown which is why they look like there sleeping

 

[babybetta]

Ah, thank you so much.


Final question.
Would it be a good idea to get a bubble bar thing for aeration?