Today, I’m going to talk about how things are going with breeding guppies and my goal to breed more exotic guppies.
As mentioned before, I’m just starting out with this and had a total of 12 good guppies (five who were nearly three weeks, seven who were a week).
And here are things I learned….
- Hornwort is not good for aquariums with brackish water. Guppies enjoy brackish water, freshwater and a little saltwater. I figured maybe because the salt water content would be small, it would survive like my Java Fern and Amazon Sword plant. It only last about two weeks at the most.
- Put a cheese cloth around the filter (if the filter protudes towards the bottom). I noticed the younger fry started to follow one of the older fry’s who was always curious and wanted to swim towards the filter. To find out that the filter sucked the younger fry. Better yet, use a sponge filter.
- First Bites from Kyorin and a little of the Omega One Freeze Dried Brine Shrimp (that easily crumbles) work very well! Feeding it almost every two hours (not while I’m sleeping).
- When transferring a pregnant mother out of the breeding tank, make sure no guppy is accidentally scooped up with it. I notice that one of the older fry that I have was in my guppy community tank (which females and males are separated). I saw one coming out for food with the grown ups around. Surprisingly it survived a week before I was able to catch it and return it to the fry tank.
As for the 12 fry that I do have, because of the filter mishap, I am down to two fry who are now going 4 weeks and are starting to show color. And three who are now approaching two weeks.
Of the five of the older, one was always alone towards the bottom and really never hunt out with the other four and he passed. The other, I have no idea what happened to it, while the third ended up getting caught behind the hornwort and the filter and didn’t know how to get out of it. The other two are doing just fine and these two, I believe were the ones that showed promise staying towards the top and were vibrant to begin with.
As for the one which I don’t know what happened to it, I did a macro photo of it to find if it had any disease and I didn’t spot anything unusual.
But I learned a few lessons so far and hopefully these remaining fry can make it past the one month mark.
