Fish Choices - Bit Further Into The Thinking

[Tropical_Fish]

I'm still in the cycle but would like to plan my fish ready for when I've finished to try and avoid any mistakes.

Tank is 70 litres - approx 20us gallons

The tank is very well filtered - I have approx 15x filtration on the tank (1000l/hour)


So I think I need to aim for approx 20" of fish in total.

I'm not after anything to out of the ordinary but we do like guppies, we also like the thought of them breeding - but I don't want to be an irresponsible breeder! So I'm partly trying to plan ahead for that.

We also various tetra like neons etc, which I would like to add later when the tank is mature. I would also like a few bottom feeder type fish.

What I don't want to do is get overrun with guppies!

So questions...


I presume from what I have read that tetras, guppies and a few small bottom feeders will live together well?

Guppies - how often to they give birth?
How many fry do they have each time (roughly)
If I leave the fry in the main tank which fish will eat them
How many fry are likely to survive?

I was kind of hoping for a natural selection type setup where the fittest survive - but even that might be too many.

Do I need to do anything to stop inbreeding?

Is this really a job for two tanks? I do have a spare small tank, and filter - would just require a heater - think it was about 30litres that could be used temporarily.

Will I get to a point where I need to separate the females from the males to stop them producing any more?

Is there any good fish I could add to eat up all the fry?

 

[LauraFrog]

A female guppy gives birth approximately once a month. Casual breeders usually expect about 20 fry. Where top quality fish are being used, fed on high protein diets and at the peak of breeding condition, this can go up to 50+. Well fed females in a community tank - plan on 20 fry/female/month.
Females can store sperm. A single mating can keep a female producing fry for up to or over 8 months. The number of fry will begin to drop off towards the end of this period. So separating the females from the males if you get overrun will have no effect at all. Buying all females will have the same effect on your tank (automated overstocking!) as a mixed sex group. (If you do go for a mixed sex group, get 3 or more females per male. Males will constantly harass females to mate, and your tank is likely to be an orgy most of the time. Having more females spreads this out = less stress.)
It's usually pretty easy to offload half grown guppies, and putting a few fry-munchers in the tank will keep numbers down as well. If you plan around having a few extra babies in there churning out ammonia, there shouldn't be any problem.

Most community fish will eat fry if they can catch them. Bottom dwellers tend to leave fry alone, but the guppies will eat their own fry and most tetras etc. will eat fry as well. If your tank is planted and has some hiding places for the fry, some of them will survive. When they are about an inch long, most pet stores will take them.

The modern guppy is an exceptionally inbred fish. Wild guppies do not have the ridiculous fins you see on pet store guppies, and their colours are not as bright or as carefully patterned. Modern guppies are basically gutless, and will die on you left right and centre for no apparent reason and without anybody being at fault. If you can get Endler's livebearer, I strongly recommend it. It looks a lot like what the normal guppy did, before humans started stuffing with them.
So with normal guppies there is no point trying to prevent inbreeding, because it's already been done for you by the people who've had those fish for hundreds of generations before you. Any effort now to stop the inbreeding is utterly futile. (One less thing to worry about.) If you manage to get your hands on endlers, you should try to stop the hybridisation of endlers and regular guppies.

It has been done, with some extremely attractive results. But these fish are sold as 'fancy guppy' or as 'endler hybrids' not as 'endler's livebearer'. It's desirable that the true endler bloodlines should remain uncontaminated with guppy blood. If you keep endler males with guppy females, ALWAYS sell the offspring as 'fancy guppies' never as 'endlers'. Don't keep endler females with normal guppy males, because there are precious few endler females to go around for some reason.


Umm... what else? Bottom feeders? Corydoras. You could get away with a bristlenose catfish also. Anything sold as 'plec' is going to grow enormous. Avoid.
Good fry munchers? Tetras will do a decent job. Dwarf cichlids are ideal. I wouldn't recommend kribs be kept with guppies, but a ram in there would work. (Just be careful because they are delicate fish.) Angelfish get too large for your tank.
Fry raising tank? You might as well, but you'd only be able to raise one drop of fry (tops) in this tank to maturity. If you tip 300 fry in there when they are newborns, you're going to be in for it when they are too big to live comfortably in this tank, and also too big to get eaten if you put them back in the community. I made this mistake myself, and I didn't want to euthanise 250 healthy fish... that's how I ended up with multiple tank syndrome, and I've just finished (last month) setting up Tank #24.

Good luck with your guppies!

 

[mrtash]

i,m no expert mate, but, sound like your heading for a nice community tank, i have one community tank, peppered cory's are nice fish, buisy little buggers too.

 

[Tropical_Fish]

Thanks for the replies..

Laurafrog - you mention fry munchers any good examples?

Tank number 24??! My wife would kill me with that many tanks!

 

[Xenon Junkie]

Anything sold as 'plec' is going to grow enormous. Avoid.

Chaetostoma (bulldog plec) are plec's but get roughly 3-4 inches at most, they look lovely.
Bristlenose plecs aso get about 5 inches, but are quite territorial!

If you can get your hand on Chaetostoma,
I recommend it as they're lovely fish

 

[saltynay]

To solve multiple tank syndrome with my guppy/endler hybrids, the males are kept in an 8 gallon community tank seperate to the females. The females are kept next to this tank which are 3 guppys there fry stay with them until I feel that tank is becoming over populated if they are lucky and are able to be sexed they transfer to the 8 gallon if not they either go in my 5-10 gallon live food tubs outside or pond. Live food tubs have mainly algae/elodea for ammonia ect. removal, sun acts as the heating and only have water changes by filling up with garden hose once in a while when water level looks low from evaporation, they are fed by flakes occasionally but mainly survive on the live food in with them (daphnia/ bloodworm/ mosquito larvae). The other option if the live food tubs are full is in the pond, I initially did this for my goldies to use them as feeder fish but they seem to be surviving in their to my amazement, the stock I sold today was a mix of males from all guppy/endler inhabitants and there was no noticeable difference between the stocks. The High protein diet and lack of vitamins of the ones in the live food can cause spinal deformity's but I have not had any yet with that issue.