Guppy Fry

[Fish4Andy]

I bought 5 female Guppies today and within a few hours there were lots of fry swimming round. Judging by some google'd photos, I'd say 4 of the 5 Guppies look pregnant.

I have a Fluval 105 which is powerful enough to suck up small shrimp so fry is going to be a problem. The fry were also being eaten by larger fish so I have removed all but two of the fry and placed them in a floating bag.

I wasn't expecting fry so quickly so I'm rather stuck because I don't know what to do.

Any advice?

 

[OldMan47]

Relax a bit Andy.
The surviving fry will be fine as long as they have plenty of hiding spaces, cover. I use java moss as my main cover, but things like elodea can work fine if you have enough in your tank to make it hard for the adults to chase the fry.

In any new livebearer tank you can reasonably expect more fry to be born than you have room to keep. My own approach is to decide which fry I want to raise and then move my female to a tank where she is the only adult. When she drops her fry, I return her to the main tank. The fry are then allowed to mature in their own tank with no predators present. The end result is often more fry than I really wanted, with a great survival rate for them.

Another common approach is to isolate a heavy female in a tank and let her drop her fry. Again the fry have a high survival rate. If you are a more practical person with lots of heavy females, another approach is to simply provide lots of cover in the main tank. What results is that each drop produces a few fry who escape predation and grow to become the next generation in your tank. The resulting baby fish are a delight in any tank and especially so in a tank that lacks tons of fry. They make it so that you need not replace the adults but they seldom lead to much of an an excess of fish in a given tank.

 

[Fish4Andy]

I bought a special fry tank yesterday which is just a plastic box with a cotton mesh around it. Sadly within a few hours all the fry had escpaed. I have 9 different plants in my tank so they have plenty places to hide, although I have noticed they don't stay in one place for more than a minutes.

 

[OldMan47]

The fry will venture out any time that they don't feel threatened. Have a look at the fry in this picture. The betta was put in the tank to help out with population control but he is a total failure.