# Guppy Questions...



## carpus (Oct 16, 2010)

I inherited about a dozen guppies and put them up in a 10g tank about two years ago. These were not particularly fancy, and are now even less so. I now have three tanks, and I have a ton of these guppies. First question, kinda dumb: are there some conditions I could impose (temp, salt, etc.) that discourage reproduction?

Not long ago I bought some rather nice "European" guppies, in the hope of introducing a bit of color and pizzaz back into my herds of tan, dull guppies. All of the new guppies were nicely colored, showy males, who wanted _nothing_ to do with my other females. In fact the existing guppies didn't pay any attention to the new ones at all, either.

The fancy males just hung out together, and did not live long lives. My tanks are in good shape, well planted, lots of filtration and water changes, no disease, parameters fine.

The fancy guppies were a bust. Is this sort of story common? I mean, isn't a guppy a guppy?


----------



## Summer (Oct 3, 2011)

I'm not sure why the fancies would ignore the others, but the only way to stop them from breeding is to separate the males and females. maybe put one fancy new one in with 2 or 3 of your drab females instead of whole bunch?


----------



## navigator black (Jan 3, 2012)

A guppy is not a guppy. There are at least three distinct species, and most of our fancy types are probably hybrids. That's academic though, because there are no breeding barriers between these species in aquaria. If the males had been well, I doubt the difference would have mattered (all healthy male guppies have one basic goal in life, and it ain't playing Super Mario), but if they hung together, hovered and didn't court, they came in sick.

The different species issue only matters with wild-types - a rare and hard to find guppy type in the current hobby.


----------



## ArtyG (Jun 29, 2011)

You need a larger tank with a pair of angels, perhaps a firemouth, any fish with a large enough mouth. Introduce your not so pretty guppies to them. They'll take it from there. Seriously, the way to maintain a tank of pretty guppies is to cull the not so pretty ones from the herd. If you are too squeamish to deal with the thought of feeding your fry to other fish undestand that we as aquarists did not invent this and in nature nearly all fish are eaten by another fish.
I have bought some excellent fancy guppies at PetSmart that provide dozens of young guppies per month to my breeder angels. They unfortunately breed so true that many a fancy tail gets fed to the angels. I also breed platties, also originally from PetSmart, to feed to angels and Cockatoo (Apistogramma caucatoides) cichlids.
It breaks my heart to feed perfect, miniature red velvet wag platties to a tank but 
you get used to it. Actually, breeding good guppies and platties has become an interest in itself.


----------



## lovebettas (Feb 7, 2012)

i have a 10 gallon full of plain guppies too,and do not have the heart to feed them to anything! But ArtyG's right i am not being a responsible fish owner!


----------



## Matt68005 (Mar 3, 2012)

how cool is that tho? Still have a colony of guppies that are reverting to wild type. Two years is a long time. You could probably sell your guppies by the pair online as "wild type" guppies. Not saying that would be right, but you could.....


----------



## guppycrazy (Apr 11, 2012)

well this happened to me and i think coz there different they might not think as the othere as guppies


----------



## Tiari (Apr 25, 2012)

If you have three tanks, empty one tank out by netting out the guppies into the other two, then start separating, placing only females or males into the empty tank. My nephew just recently had to do this as he had a guppy explosion of epic proportions. 

Once he separated them out, the breeding stopped.


----------



## guppycrazy (Apr 11, 2012)

yes tiari right well i say also to eave them how long has it been going on for and stuff?


----------



## navigator black (Jan 3, 2012)

lovebettas - that's not irrsponsible. Look at domestic guppies, after 70 or so years of selected breeding. They are twice the size of wilds, have ten times the tail fins, have much less variety in the colours and swim at about 20% of the speed. You can take that as ideal, and work towards one colour, one shape etc. People really get into that.
But since it is no longer a natural form of a fish, you can do anything - breed it back smaller, reduce the tail size so they can swim fast, let them revert to functional forms, - the choice is yours and there is no right and wrong. Clearly, being cruel or keeping them badly is wrong, but if it's a matter of looks or what you breed for, do what you will. 

I keep two wild caught guppy strains, one from Colombia and one from Trinidad. I prefer the movement of the fish to the flashy colours - just personal taste. If I hadn't been lucky enough to get guppies direct from the wild, and I wanted guppies, I'd be busy breeding the big tails off them because I hate watching fancy guppies try to swim. With fancy breeding, you try to produce what you want to see.


----------

