Paradise3 said:
Nice stand! I do have one thing I thought I'd mention, wouldn't it make more sense to have the larger fish in the larger tank and the smaller fish in the smaller tank?
All the tanks will house guppies, I only have 6 males and 4 females as of now, but the females have had over 60 babies in just two months. I plan on putting all the fry in the large tank so that they have room to grow up, the males in the 30 gallon tank have more then enough room to admit more males, the females are in the 15 gallon and I remove any fry that they have when they have them. Unless I want to breed any, I will be keeping the males and females separate.
Yes but females get larger than males in size anyway so would it not make more sense to have the ones that are larger and producing fry in the larger tank with the smaller, none fry producing males in the smaller tank? Just my thoughts is all
A female guppy gets pregnant on the drop of the hat and if put them with any males, the males will harass them to death, lost two females that way before separating them. The pet store only wants males, so I plan on raising them out to be sold to them. I may try putting my excess females outside in my rain barrels to keep mosquitos down for the summer. A female guppy, once empregnated, re empregnates from stored sperm for up to six months. Any females I will use for breeding with select males will be put in breeding tanks and then transfered back to the female tank to have their fry. The male is what is important for color selection, the females are just the vessels for the progeny.
I think we're having some crossovers somewhere. I know about guppies, I know females will use stored sperm to continue giving birth for so long.
What I'm saying is your main tanks - A 30 gallon and a 15 gallon.
You plan on using the 30 gallon for the smaller, non-birthing males but the smaller 15 gallon for the larger, birthing females?
I see no sense in that.
Oh and I keep males and females together with no problem myself, the only time a female will be harassed(normally) is when there are more males than females or less females than recommended per male.
I got the guppies in January off of craigslist, I got more males then females, not my choice, and the females were already pregnant. I only got the 55 gallon tank a few weeks ago from a friend for $30 and prior to that the 30 gallon was my largest tank and the 15 seemed better for three females, now four with a cobra female I got for free. The 15 gallon is a tall one at 18 inches and the 30 gallon is also a tall tank at almost 25 inches and 24 wide and it shows off the males best right now. When the fry grow out I will separate the males from the females to avoid excess breeding. If I arrange my stand right, I can fit the 55 in the middle and the 30 gallon horizontally at one end and the 15 horizontally at the other end with room for one or two of my smaller tanks in between then, one is a 10 and the other is a 15. Right now it is the 30, 15, a 10 with 2 month old fry in it and a 5 with 3 week old fry in it. I want to pick out the best looking males from my fry for the next breeding stock. I have six adult males in the 30 with two fry from a birthing when I first got the guppies and separated the females. One is a male starting to show color and one Is a female that I will remove this week to the female tank. I guess I could put all the males in the 55 gallon tank, the females in the 30 and the fry in the 15 till they start showing their sex. I started back up with fish last May with a tank filled with 176 goldfish fry, about 30 of which survived and are in my outdoor pond. I last had fish in 1979 and by happenstance, yard sales and thrift stores have acquired nine aquariums over the past few years. I saw an ad for free feeder guppies and thought it would be a good way to at least cycle a few of my aquariums and if they died, they would have done their job and a visit to a few pet stores and I would be back in guppies. But only one of the seven males died and two of the five females died. the remaining three females have had over 80 babies and maybe 60 have survived. I think I read somewhere that as many as 200 guppies can be kept in a 55 gallon tank with good filtration and water changes. It does not take much, as you know, to hit 200 guppies. In time I may end up having all eight aquariums set up, the fives and tens and breeding tanks for selected pairs. I do not have a good balance of males to females yet and guppies are not the same as when I had them 35 years ago, a lot more to select from now, I may even want to try some Endlers from one of the pets stores here, they are so tiny compared to guppies.
That makes more sense now you mention you have other tanks for separating, etc. lol.
As for Endlers, if they are from a pet store they probably aren't wild Endlers and will be Endler x Guppy like my Scarlets and Snakeskins which are my male "guppies"
I was excited last year when I adopted a tank with 176 tiny fry that I thought were guppies and the owner had no clue what they were. It was a scummy smelly 10 gallon tank with no light and just a sponge filter. After a few weeks, less actually it became apparent that they were not guppies, to my chagrin. I was hoping for the thrill of watching them sex out and color, like a grab basket. That is when I joined numerous forums seeking the id of these fish, everyone kept saying "Dude, you've got goldfish". That was the last thing I expected, but that it what they are and about 30 are in a pond outside with the largest one about 4 inches long. When I saw an ad for a dozen free guppies, I took advantage of it. They came in a jar, no tank, nothing. I put them in dechlorinated water in a small tank at first, then got my 30 going that had originally been set up when I got the fry I thought were guppies, using some of the pond water as it came out a nozzle from the filter to do 50% of the water in the tank, plus a gravel base used before and some elodea from the pond that snails rode in on. Two females that did not look good to begin with and a small and battered maled died the first night, but the rest have thrived and the babies arrived within a few weeks, all three females were not just big fish, but far along with their fry. I put them in the smaller 15 to make it easier to separate the fry in a bare bottom tank. I really would not mind seeing a balance colony going in the 55 and know if I do that, I may as well set up all my tanks for I will be needing them before long. I got an Eco air 1 plus air pump with 8 ports that now runs 4 tanks bubbles. When I did guppies from 1967 in kindergarten when a class mate gave me some of hers, to 1979 when I was in 12th grade, tanks were different and filtrations systems were different, so were the guppies. I got my cobra female from the pet store for free, they wanted her gone and the dozen males were going to harass her to death. She looks pregnant, so I anticipate a batch of cobra's from her and the day I got her, the pet store got a shipment of fish with ick that nearly killed all their stock, fortunately I got her before the other fish could infect her. All the cobra males died within a week of the shipment along with all the guppies they got. Her brood could be of any of those dozen males and she likely has sperm stored from several of them for multiple batches of mixed cobras over the next four to six months. I want to set them up in their own tank.
