Overstocked Tank

[pirategrl]

Will an overstocked tank ever fully cycle or will there always be a little ammonia?  And help me come up with ideas to get rid of guppies please.  I was given 4 pregnant females and I am over run with babies.  I have separated the one male and put him in my community tank and right now the fry are too little to tell gender.... but there has to be hundreds of them in a 10 gallon and I swear they have had at least 2 litters since I've gotten them.  Also this is a lesson to research fish before you happily add them into your tank  I feel bad for them and have given away to friends as many as they will take but I'm at a loss on what to do with the rest.


The 10 gallon was cycled to 6 baby neons

 

[pirategrl]

Yay!  I found all the guppies a new home!  Thank you Craigslist.

 

[frapadoodle]

Glad to hear the guppies got rehomed. Yeah, one male and one female equal hundreds, is why I don't do guppies.
As to ammonia in an overstocked tank, yeah that is one problem and means more water changes. Also overstocking reduces swimming space and can cause problems with territory

 

[eaglesaquarium]

A lack of oxygen is a problem as well.
 
Glad to hear that the guppies got homes. 

 

[pirategrl]

I am very turned off to live bearers since this fiasco....

 

[frapadoodle]

They aren't all bad, but not my cup of tea either.

 

[Lunar Jetman]

This is pretty much why I moved away from Guppies/Mollies/Platies. I haven't kept them for years now. Nice enough but the population explosion meant I couldn't get any other fish I wanted to.


They're good for beginners I suppose. Fairly hardy and breed like rabbits so you get the sense of achievement with them. Until you learn that they're not difficult to breed at all!

Much more of a challenge with other fish anyway.

 

[CezzaXV]

The bacteria should be able to cope with any load of ammonia, as long as you're not silly with overstocking. While they should multiply to cope with it, they can only multiply as much as there is space for them on the filter media - there is a limit. Obviously more fish means more ammonia being produced, which eventually means more nitrate, making larger/more frequent water changes a necessity.

When I had guppies I had all males, though you do need to keep them in a fair sized group to curb aggression.