Any advice getting through the ranks of the Guppypocalypse

[biofish]

Every morning and every night…. I walk up to my tanks to say a bright good morning and a quiet good night to my lovely children and give them bits of food to share my affection. But before I can truly admire and praise my lovely angels… my view is blocked!!! By a hoard of twisting streaks of grey, clambering over each other, testing the edges of the glass! A mass of bodies, of gaping maws, beady eyes, and barely perceivable flashes of color that are immediately consumed in the swirling grey bodies. Demons they are! Procreating at a nightmarish speed! Guzzling up shocking amounts of food… the food that’s supposed to go to my lovely calm angels playing in the sand, unaware of the war above them. Unaware of the fight through the demons to reach them and give them their nourishment…. But even as I break through their snarling ranks, they descend from the sky to prowl the earth; searching for the precious bundles of food so lovingly delivered to gobble them up before they can reach their intended recipient!

Or Aka my guppies are food fanatics and whoever made the rule “the proper amount of food to feed your fish is what they can consume in 30 seconds” never owned fast moving flake monsters who would probably eat my entire container of flakes in a blink of an eye. And I have NO idea how much food my Cory catfish actually get because my Cory catfish are so so so stupid and my guppies are way too intelligent. Aka: I have to hide my sinking pellets all around the tank to prevent my sudden bottom dwelling guppies from eating the pellets faster than my cory’s just trying to find them. All while trying not to hurt the hoard of guppies literally weaving between and mopping my fingers as I try to subtly hide the pellets from them.

And yes I’m making this post after watching one of my precious stupid children find a pellet, eat a couple bites, get excited, loose the pellet ON SAND SUBSTRATE, and go the completely wrong way trying to find it and then giving up when it was right there 5° to his left and a guppy who’d been following the Cory scooped it up and swam away with it. Leaving a Cory looking like the world just ended.

And my candy stripped pleco who I only ever really see when I change the decorations in the tank but I’m hoping by sheer faith that he gets enough food. I tried a algae wafer once 20 minutes after lights out and just a cloud of starving wolves guppies just descended into a writhing mass.

Basically: HOW DO FEED BOTTOM FISH

 

[NannaLou]

I have no idea, I have a guppy only tank and wonder the same thing about ‘how much’ to feed them…your description is spot on

 

[Colin_T]

Every morning and every night…. I walk up to my tanks to say a bright good morning and a quiet good night to my lovely children and give them bits of food to share my affection. But before I can truly admire and praise my lovely angels… my view is blocked!!! By a hoard of twisting streaks of grey, clambering over each other, testing the edges of the glass! A mass of bodies, of gaping maws, beady eyes, and barely perceivable flashes of color that are immediately consumed in the swirling grey bodies. Demons they are! Procreating at a nightmarish speed! Guzzling up shocking amounts of food… the food that’s supposed to go to my lovely calm angels playing in the sand, unaware of the war above them. Unaware of the fight through the demons to reach them and give them their nourishment…. But even as I break through their snarling ranks, they descend from the sky to prowl the earth; searching for the precious bundles of food so lovingly delivered to gobble them up before they can reach their intended recipient!

Now that is creative writing at its best

You can try feeding the bottom dwellers a couple of hours after lights out.

 

[Circus]

When I kept community tanks with guppies I would get Sera spirulina tabs, which stick to the glass when you press them on. Put a couple of those on one side of their tank, then some sinking pellets on the others once the guppies are sufficiently distracted.

 

[Lajos_Detari]

This is always a problem when you have fish that are fast eaters and fish that are slow eaters.

You will have to drop more food at different places at the same time to prevent the Guppies from eating all the food at one place.

You can also put both flakes or floating food and sinking pellets at the same time whenever you feed them.
Or you can first put the flakes/floating food to attract the Guppies to the top level and then quickly put the sinking pellets.

For your sinking pellets, it's better if you can get the fine pellets instead of one big piece if you want to prevent the Guppies from taking all the food.
If the fine pellets cannot sink, just put them in a small cup of water and pour it into the tank for the pellets to sink immediately.

But if you have too many Guppies, then probably you won't be able to solve this problem.
Reduce the numbers of Guppies.

For last resort, separate Guppies from the slow eating fish.

 

[Oblio]

@Lajos_Detari has some tips that I use. (I have Buenos Aires Tertras that act like your guppies) I also pre-soak sinking pellets and place on substrate with a turkey baster. Placing a few in caves too small for BATs but large enough for Corys with a baster helps too. The BATs still come after the pellets but I try to get enough on the bottom so that the BAT leftovers are available for my Corys.

 

[GaryE]

On one hand, you have the orc-gull guppies, screaming "me me me" and descending on the gentle picnic of the hobbit corys. It's an eternal lifestyle conflict. Guppies in the wild are tiny fish surrounded by efficient predators, and they have to rush in and eat fast before the big mouths arrive. On the other hand, Corydoras live in large groups, slowly and methodically hunting through the sand for worms and other choice morsels. They hunt all day long, slowly and steadily. They love their little shire with its sand, rocks and plants. But with flocks of gulls above, that shire is in permanent, deep shi...re trouble.

The solution, as always, is another tank. A couple of guppies, okay. A flock and it's guppicane warning. There can be no peace. Your town is not big enough for the both of them.

One of my all time favourite tanks had ten each of three different Corydoras species, and no other fish. I may do it again, as I really liked watching their complex little lives. They are very social creatures in groups.

Tricks? They don't exist. Think of the energy you would need if you ate three meals a day on a beach that had 5000 seagulls. You can tell I'm on the Cory side of the eternal battle. The guppies should move. You can add tetras, ideally not silvery ones as silver is the camouflage of quick movement in sunlit waters. It's the marker of life in the fast lane. Then again, small silvery tetras won't breed unless you make an effort, so the numbers are easily managed.

 

[TheTenthDoctor]

I breed guppies and endlers and the only thing I can think of is to keep them in a seperate tank, that way they can go about their madness without disturbing an of the other tank inhabbitence.

 

[biofish]

Thank you everyone for your advice! I’ll look into the Sera spirulina tabs and the smaller pellets! I actually find sprinkling flakes along the bottom of the tank to be my go to when I’m super worried; the guppies don’t see them as well and tend to swim over them since they aren’t swirling in free fall and they just lie in wait for a Cory to wiggle over them (which when they do they completely freeze as if not expecting the sudden morsel).

Though I will be the first one to admit I have way too many guppies. Something something new fish mom me getting excited over grand babies and thinking they would only take a couple months to grow up big enough to sell if needed. HAA. Jokes on me. My very FIRST batch of fry JUST became big enough a couple weeks ago. 6 months is such a long childhood for such a relatively short lifespaned creature .

Edit: my overwhelming number of guppy fry really be getting the rabid swarm down without influence from their parents

 

[Uberhoust]

Don't have guppies but I have a lot of Angels that whip through the food preventing my GBR's from eating. I normally feed the angels at the front of the tank floating food and toss some sinking pellets into the back of the tank, for the GBR's

 

[Sgooosh]

Thank you everyone for your advice! I’ll look into the Sera spirulina tabs and the smaller pellets! I actually find sprinkling flakes along the bottom of the tank to be my go to when I’m super worried; the guppies don’t see them as well and tend to swim over them since they aren’t swirling in free fall and they just lie in wait for a Cory to wiggle over them (which when they do they completely freeze as if not expecting the sudden morsel).

Though I will be the first one to admit I have way too many guppies. Something something new fish mom me getting excited over grand babies and thinking they would only take a couple months to grow up big enough to sell if needed. HAA. Jokes on me. My very FIRST batch of fry JUST became big enough a couple weeks ago. 6 months is such a long childhood for such a relatively short lifespaned creature .

Edit: my overwhelming number of guppy fry really be getting the rabid swarm down without influence from their parents
View attachment 151781

cute baby guppies are they all female?

i kinda taught the cories how to wrestle in case the guppies get all the food

 

[biofish]

cute baby guppies are they all female?

i kinda taught the cories how to wrestle in case the guppies get all the food

They’re a mix of genders that haven’t started getting their colors in yet! I put them in there when they’re big enough to not get eaten by their siblings but too big to be kept with the newborns and once they’re comfortably big enough to not get eaten by their parents, then they get moved to my adult tanks based on their genders

They look much bigger than they actually are in the photo

But I DO find I get a heck ton more female guppy fry than male. Or more female guppy fry survive. Is that a thing? Do the ladies have a higher chance of being born/surviving or am I just blessed with lots of cute strong af granddaughters?

Also you can’t just mention teaching Cory’s to wrestle and not elaborate

 

[Sgooosh]

They’re a mix of genders that haven’t started getting their colors in yet! I put them in there when they’re big enough to not get eaten by their siblings but too big to be kept with the newborns and once they’re comfortably big enough to not get eaten by their parents, then they get moved to my adult tanks based on their genders

They look much bigger than they actually are in the photo

But I DO find I get a heck ton more female guppy fry than male. Or more female guppy fry survive. Is that a thing? Do the ladies have a higher chance of being born/surviving or am I just blessed with lots of cute strong af granddaughters?

Also you can’t just mention teaching Cory’s to wrestle and not elaborate

sometimes at least in my case a brood will be uneven to the number of males and females
this time i got a lot of males
last 2 times they were all females, barely any males

 

[emeraldking]

The problem is that guppies will eat almost everything. So, also the food that's meant for other fish.