I’ve been asked if one wants to raise guppies, which ones are better? The beautiful fancy guppies with colors that pop or the juvenile guppies that don’t make the cut because of their lackluster colors and are culled to become feeder guppies that are sold for cheap, mean to feed predator fish.
I’ve raised and breeded fancy guppies and still do, but I’ve also came across a blog post that feeder guppies are much more hardier, can actually be fish to be raised and kept and should be appreciated? While others said that feeder guppies were kept in horrid conditions, can’t live long because they are unhealthy and are in bad shape and probably have some type of parasite.
So, I wanted to conduct my own nearly four month research.
20 Fancy Guppies vs. 20 Feeder Guppies
Both Guppies were put into quarantine for a month and the survival in amonth was 15 Fancy Guppies, 18 Feeder Guppies.
The fancy guppies quarantine tank had an outbreak, which I believe to be from one of the corydoras. The fancy guppies suffered from advanced finrot within 48 hours of being introduced. The feeder guppies did NOT experience the finrot as with the fancy guppies.
As I began medication with Maracyn 2, Paragard, Melafix (not all at once).
Unfortunately, it didn’t look good. The fancy guppies were dying at a rapid rate but two types of guppies were not affected by the fin rot, the yellow guppy, a twin tail and the red tail guppies and a certain strain of cobra guppies.
For the Feeder Guppies, all female survived, all were pregnant. A few males were left.
The medication went on and surviving guppies were quarantined for another six weeks.
By late October, 6 Fancy Guppies and 12 Feeder Guppies were left. No more fin rot, but interesting is that of the fancy guppies, five female and one male were left. For the Feeder Guppies, the majority were all female.
By mid-November, all Fancy Guppies have died, all Feeder Guppies that were left from October have still lived.
It made no sense that the majority of the Feeder Guppies didn’t get the same diseases, the same finrot, the same problems that the Fancy Guppies experienced.
I then took the dozen or so Feeder Guppies that survived and placed them in another community tank, but this one featuring molly fish and platy fish.
These Feeder Guppies are doing amazingly well with the Molly and Platy fish.
Fastforward a month later, these Feeder Guppies have now been introduced to my large Amazon tank.
Taking close-up macroshots and there are still no visible signs of finrot or anything negative.
They are still swimming close to one another and the pregnant females look as they are guarding each other from other fish.
But they seem to be healthy and have not succumbed to fin rot, ick, parasites or anything?
The fact that nearly a dozen lived, while all Fancy Guppies were wiped out was surprising.
Here are a few things that I think why:
- Guppies are not as hardy as they used to be as many are inbred.
- In my experience, fancy guppies thrive in smaller populations. I truly believe longtime guppy health is longer when the guppies are kept a male and two females (or three females) in separate tanks than having more than four.. I have had better luck raising guppies in those conditions.
- Many people breed guppies to have the same colors from the same strain and most are bred for profit. A few breeders are not in it for long time health of a guppy, because guppies tend to reproduce so much, they want the best looking guppies that they can sell for a good price. Those who do care tend to keep strains of guppies separate.
- Feeder Guppies are guppies that don’t have the cool colors or patterns, are culled and tossed aside to be used as feeders.
- Feeder Guppies are put in the worst living conditions that when given a chance of survival, they live in survival mode. I notice the mannerisms of Fancy Guppies and Feeder Guppies are almost different. Feeder Guppies are the type that jump, never had that with Fancy Guppies. Feeder Guppies, especially the female are feisty and protective. When I had the first 20 guppies, they kept together like a school. Four months later, these same feeder guppies remain close together, while fancy guppies they’ll swim around throughout the tank, being curious. Also, these Feeder Guppies interacted within themselves, not with the Fancy Guppies.
With that being said, that was the result from my experiment. Just one experiment done over four months. More testing needs to be done.
Will I do it again? I probably will as they are inexpensive and there are many safe tests that can be done, especially when it comes to breeding.
But with that being said, from this experiment, I learned:
- Feeder Guppies are Quite Hardy – Regardless if they do or don’t, any new fish you get at a pet store should be in a quarantine tank and the fish must be observed. In this experiment, the Fancy Guppies died of diseases, not the Feeder Guppies.
- Feeder Guppies are NOT Ugly Fish – This is subjective.Do you find all black fish ugly? All white fish ugly? Some Feeder Guppies, you can see what kind of strain from the color of the tails or if they have spots. They may not have bright colors, but to me, they are not bad.
- Feeder Guppies have different mannerisms than the Fancy Guppy and to be in packs unlike the Fancy Guppies in the test. For some reason, they did not branch out to other Fancy Guppies and stayed close to their own pack.
- Feeder Guppy Females tend to exhibit some aggressive mannerisms which I have not seen in female Fancy Guppies, but also a protective nature in which the females try to defend a territory
With that being said, I see no reason why Feeder Guppies can’t be use as non-feeders and kept in a tank to be enjoyed. They are much cheaper but remember, they are raised in worst conditions than Fancy Guppies. They are raised to be eaten by bigger fish. A quarantine tank is very important as with having certain medications just in case, not just for these Feeder Guppies for fish in general. You just never know if the fish you are bringing home has diseases and if an outbreak does happen, you need to be prepared.
Fancy Guppies are much more colorful and they look great. But I’ve suffered more deaths with Fancy Guppies in larger groups, while success in keeping them under 4 in tanks. Feeder Guppies are able to tolerate similar conditions and were not as affected to diseases and fin rot which affected other Fancy Guppies in the same tank.
Four months later and the Feeder Guppies are still going strong and were introduced to my other Fancy Guppies and they still stay within their own pack.
But overall, I’ll post another blog in the future to see how these fish who survived the first test are doing.
