Need Advice On Preg Guppy

[evelester]

Well, I am about to be a grandma... LOL, I have 2 guppys, one is male, the other is female, the mom is very pregnant, she is healthy, water params are perfect, 0's all the way, even nitrates are almost unreadable (i thought nitrates were suppost to be higher) anyway, we do not have the $ to invest in another tank, would like to, but cant, how many of these babies will make it? It is a planted tank, and I also have some breeding grass at the bottom, and another set of the breeding grass I could 'float at the top if you thing that would help too (are the babies going to be at the top or bottom?

Ok, and if the chances of the babies making it are close to 0, the most we could do is one of those cheap tanks at wall mart, like 3-5 gallons, with a filter and such, just adding a heater and cycling with other tank medium....

Is there ANY way the babies will survive if we keep them in this tank? The fish I have already are listed below, all very calm, betta has not been a problem since day one (tank has been up since December or so)

What do you say? Thanks in advance!

 

[theotheragentm]

The cheapest tanks are the 10 gallon tanks, because they are the smallest size that are manufactured in huge quantities. They're about $11 at PetSmart or PetCo. You can price match heaters and filters on PetSmart.com and take it into a store. That makes it about $30 in total if you want to go that way.

Survival rate will not be 0 if you have plants. At least some of the fry will survive, although if you don't have room for a fry tank, it's probably not best if you have too many survivors. Fry will hide on the top and bottom if there is cover.

The plants are why you have low nitrates if they are real plants. Basically fish make waste, but plants use them as their fertilizer. Plants use ammonia, nitrites, and nitrates. If you're not too heavily stocked, you may have very low bioload measurements.

 

[helterskelter]

Tetra's and betta are gonna have a field day, but even in my old community tanks i used to get a few survive.

She will usually have between 10-50 fry at a time, but i think you may find 1 or 2 surive most of the time..

 

[miltiadis_s]

so is it bad to have 0 nitrAtes?

 

[theotheragentm]

0 nitrates is fine. It's actually toxic to the fish, but much less so than ammonia and nitrites. You may have a lower bioload in the tank and high plant load, but if you have a normal stock number in your tank, you may be reading nitrates incorrectly. Although I don't like strip test kits, liquid test kits are inaccurate on the low level of nitrates. As long as you are under 40 ppm, you should be okay.

 

[evelester]

thanks so much everyone, i do use the liquid test kits, and it is only a 'little' darker than 0, and I do have live plants in the tank, so I see why now, thanks! we will check wal mart today for a tank set up, i really want to do that if possible, but we only have a wal mart and a 'pet store' with really expensive fish stuff, we dont have a petco or any real 'fish stores for over an hour here

I am going to try to catch it on film if i can! lots of pictures will be coming for sure!thanks!

 

[evelester]

ok, we broke down and bought a 5 gallon set up, I will get pics later, it has a filter, light and we added a heater, gravel and some fake plants, as soon as I get it cycled i will put the momma in there, hopefully it will cycle fast, we are using media from other tank to try to speed it up....

pics coming soon--- thanks everyone!

 

[kribensis12]

I can get a 10g for 7 dollars at petsmart. But you could also buy a trap for them.