Couple Of Guppy Breeding Questions

[CherryDanio]

Hi all. Given how excited I was about my neon possibly having babies (turned out she was constipated ) I went on gumtree last night lookin for free tanks and came up trumps. I now have another 85L tank I have chatted to my LFS who says they get through guppies faster than you could believe, apparently they all get sold within a couple of days and they would be willing to do me a deal. I would like to divide the tank into two sections, a larger one and a smaller fry section. Female guppies in the big section (I already have males in another tank). A couple of questions first though..

* What is the best way of getting a select number of girls pregnant (I don't want to be too over run though I know with guppies thast bound to happen). I was thinking putting two ladies in with one guy in the fry section then leaving the girls in that section untill they drop to avoid stressing them out by moving them back and forth?

* At what age can I seperate the male and female fry and put them in with the adults?

*How long should I expose the females to the male to be sure they are pregnant?

Thanks in advance

 

[africanjake]

Your method of using the fry tank to separate the male and some females is probably the best way to only get a couple of females pregnant, this also means that you would be able to control which male was breeding and select your healthiest. i can't really answer the size of fry to be seperating and putting in the main tanks as i generally just give them plenty of places to hide and let the mother drop in the main tank however this will lead to a lower rate of survival than some other methods. As for how long you need to leave the male in with the females just leave him in there until you noticed your females being pregnant.
hope this helps.

 

[lilfishie]

when buying guppies from LFS i have found most to already be pregnant despite being in seperate tanks from the males, they can store sperm you see for upto 7 broods of fry from single mating, so even if you put them with your male its not going to be 100% he is the father

 

[Storm20]

You dont really have to confine the male aznd the female guppies as not fights should take place.

 

[Christi_22]

Hi CD

In relation to separating the male and female fry, as soon as you are able to tell the difference in the sexes I think they will be fine to go in with the adults (as long as you don't have any other types of large fish in there which may eat the fry if they are still small).

The thing is they can start to breed at about 3 months or so. (although they do develop at different rates). You also need to be careful as some males can resemble females early on, so when you think you have a tank full of female Guppy fry you can actually end up with a tank of pregnant Guppy Fry.

Guppy parents will also eat their own fry, I noticed after my last female gave birth (in a 20 Gallon) that she would chase and eat any fry that were free swimming near the bottom/mid water, but did not try to eat the fry that were on the surface (were they naturally swim to after being born). She was removed into my community tank.

 

[CherryDanio]

Thanks for all the replies Exactly what I wanted to know! I'm so excited about getting my females now!!