# Mosquito fish



## RaidenNation (Jan 9, 2013)

A while back I got some ghost shrimp and ended up with a tiny fish that I assumed was a feeder guppy fry, but after 3 months of waiting for color to come in I decided to do some exploring and discovered that mosquito fish look very similar. Anyway, I was curious how big they get and how long it takes for them to become full grown, and also what the differences are between them and guppies. She is still much smaller than my adult guppies.


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## CAM (Jan 27, 2013)

Here's a link that might be useful:

Freshwater Pond Fish for Water Gardens Mosquito fish


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## ArtyG (Jun 29, 2011)

Gambusia are interesting fish because of their similarities to guppies. It is somewhat startling to haul in a minnow net and see what looks like a bunch of plain guppies from a pond in NC ! They make an interesting though somewhat scrappy aquarium species. The males will attempt to mate with fancy guppy females but I have never seen any fry result although I could have missed some. I once thought it would be neat to breed fancy guppies that were winter hardy in NC but nature would not play along.


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## RaidenNation (Jan 9, 2013)

Thank you both for the info! Yeah I would love to see if she will breed with my male guppies, I would be interested to see how that plays out. She is definitely a very hardy fish, she has lasted through a few aquarium fiascoes that some of my guppies did not, and never even showed signs of distress. I'm happy to have her!


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## CAM (Jan 27, 2013)

Either that website I linked or another I ran across said they are one of the hardiest fish species there is.

But they only live a year or two.


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## RaidenNation (Jan 9, 2013)

Looking through other forums and google searches it seems that most people don't think they are capable of breeding, a lot of the people that tried said that the mosquito fish were very aggressive and killed a lot of the guppies. My little fish has never caused a problem in my tank, I wonder if it is because she was raised with all guppies.


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## RaidenNation (Jan 9, 2013)

This is my mystery fish...


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