Many guppy breeding/baby questions.

[DinosaurMeag]

Hi everyone!

I have a 10 gallon tank with 7 guppies in it right now. There's a few pregnant females in the tank, (one seems to be constantly popping out babies), as well as males and a juvenile in the tank. I have a separate bowl that I'm keeping the babies in right now, and cleaning it out every other day.

I've been feeding the babies crushed tropical flakes as well as dried bloodworms, and yesterday I gave them some frozen brine shrimp and bloodworms to try. Do I need to get the First Bites food for them, or are the tropical flakes etc okay?

Also, the moms keep having the babies at night, so it's hard to tell when the babies are in there, unless they're yellow (My gravel is gray natural stone), but I don't know whether I should put the very pregnant moms into a breeder...I don't want them stressed out to the point where they abort the babies, but I also don't want my babies eaten. Any advice on that would be great.

Once I can determine the sex of the babies, I should separate them to prevent inbreeding, right? And how young can they be when they start reproducing?

I think I'm done with questions for now, if I think of any more, I'll put them here.

Thanks!

 

[Onion01]

1) crushed flakes is fine it they're eating it
2) put the mom in a breeder with a open v shaped bottom. Mom will pop out the babies, they will fall into the collection tray, then remove the mom. No need to take her out of the water, just scoop her in from below
3) As for inbreeding, most breeders inbreed up to 4 generations to select out traits, then out breed. As for size, between 1.5-2" is ideal for them to breed

as a final note: do you want attractive, large guppies, or just lots of babies? If you keep females in with males, she will breed at the earliest opportunity. That means that she will devote most of her resources to maturing sexually. Her growth will slow, and her colors will not be as vibrant. If you want her to grow to her largest possible size and give off the best colors, let her grow out separate from any males until she hits 2-2.5"

Hope that helped

 

[Bethany]

yeah definitely agree with onion. and if you don't have space to keep all the babies, with a ten gallon, i'd suggest moving out the females soon, because they'll keep breeding and there will be too many to handle

 

[Bethany]

I've bred guppies several times, and it always results in me selling off the females, because it's too much time and effort for a community fish. if you want the babies, i suggest keeping those, and weeding out the females.
you can only go through moving the babies around and worrying about catching the females before they eat them so many times before it gets old, you know?