I’ve written about guppies before and I’m currently learning about breeding them before I start purchasing, more expensive, fancier guppies.
Unfortunately, the experimentation process has not been as easy as I thought it would be.
For one, I had two very pregnant guppies who were to give birth. I put them in breeder boxes and they stressed out too much to the point of exhaustion and as I tried to save them, it was too late. They fought hard to stay alive and died.
I then eliminated the breeder boxes and tried the baskets you would find at pet stores and again, that stressed one out and to not have what happened with the breeder boxes, I isolated it by itself in a tank, followed articles of keeping the water shallow and I think that it stressed the fish out and again, it died.
There has been one sure way that has worked for me so far, that’s keeping the pregnant guppy with its small female community but I have created a cave with hornwort and Java fern. And have been good at seeing the fry hiding in the plants.
And seeing them hide without being seen by the other fish. Granted, I have seen numerous guppies waiting for the fry to come out and what’s interesting is I’ve read that guppies don’t care after they give birth and most guppies will eat them, but I’ve seen female guppies actually trying to protect the babies from those who are trying to eat it.
I’ve seen a few fry think they are brave to hang out with the older guppies and try to swim with them and venture alone with other guppies trying to eat it. I’ve started to sense this behavior, when I see them waiting towards the bottom, not eating from the sediment but looking for fry to eat.
So, there are times where I have to rescue guppies and to be truthful, I’ve been doing this a lot….once I spot them, I use a very small net to catch them and put them in a separated tank where only fry are located.
The big difference is that successful breeders will have dozens of guppies, by doing it this method, I’m only rescuing under a dozen guppies. I’m sure many of the guppies ate others or a guppy just doesn’t have a lot of babies but at this point, I rather have a female guppy who would survive than putting a healthy one in a breeder’s tank to get all stressed and die.
I took this photo with a macro lens because I wanted to know if this mother died from a disease or
I’ve tested different types and it’s interesting that the one tank that did help the one above, is a certain see through plastic tank where she swam and two female guppies just swam close to her, by her side and didn’t leave and it seemed to calm her down.
While I know that female guppies will continually get pregnant and chances are you’ll lose female and male guppies in the process of breeding, but it’s been a process of learning.
I’m looking forward to seeing these fry grow… And hopefully grow in confidence that I’m ready to take the next step of guppy breeding and trying to achieve certain strains of guppies that I really like in the process.
And in the process, hopefully making sure the female guppy survives each time.
Again, this is a learning process and watching a lot of YouTube videos (which many tend to offer different advice), but it’s something that I’m enjoying.
