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!
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!