Guppy Ratio

[MissD]

I was at WalMart this evening to get batteries and, naturally, had to walk through the fish section. 90% of the guppies in the tank were either already dead and half eaten, or gulping their last breaths on the bottom of the tank, so I decided to bring home the 3 healthy looking males that were still swimming around. I scored a little, too. The guy serving me didn't know the difference between males and females so I played dumb and my boys were marked up as females ($1.37 instead of $2.97 each) and when I got them home I noticed that the cashier only blipped the barcode once. I got 3 males for the price of 1 female Two are black tuxedos and the 3rd is completely black from head to tail (he's the one that initially caught my attention).

Anyway, my question(s):

I brought them home and got them in their quarantine tank and checked on my guppy fry (anything from 3 months to about 2 weeks old, mixed) and noticed that I had a few definite males so I decided to separate them. When I was doing it, though, I found it really weird that out of 55 fry, 48 were female and only 7 were male. Is there any reason for this? I know with crocodiles the temperature can determine the sex of the eggs when they hatch, but would this be the same in fish? Just wondering if anyone else had heard of that, or maybe knew why. Is such a huge ratio difference common?

Curious...thanks!

 

[Alix]

could me that they are like crocks. maybe the momma was warm when she was pregnant so she had more females? but if you think thats not right or what ever GOOGLE IT behold the power of google

 

[MissD]

Yeah, I s'pose I could check Google. I don't know why that didn't occur to me before, come to think of it. I guess I just wanted to see if anyone had experienced anything similar themselves to maybe get a more reliable source...

I'm gonna have a poke around online and see what I can find. Of course, any help/experience/anything would still be great!

 

[Ddraig Goch]

Some fish mature faster than others so more of your 'females' could actually be males, after all, some are only 2 weeks old. They should all mature by 6 months.

 

[MissD]

Yeah, that's true too. I did have a look about on Google but didn't find what I was looking for. There are only three babies that are two weeks old so they're in with the females until I know for sure what they are. The others are all closer to the 2-3 month mark so I'm pretty sure they are all females. It's still kinda strange.

Thanks for the reply

 

[webcat5]

Maybe because the females have sooo many babies it takes less males to populate. In the wild many of the babies would be eatten and most likely they would be the females, in that case things would balance out in the end. Just a Guess.