View printer-friendly version Guppies are a fish that people talk a lot about. However, do you really know how neat your guppy is? The wild guppies look just like the feeder fish guppies you see in stores, and from them are bred today's fancy guppies.
Guppies are freshwater fish, but like a little bit of salt in their water. They need a diet that has some green foods, like algae as well as proteins in it. When guppies have enough protein in their diet, they do not eat their young.
Female guppies that loose their males but have bred can keep having babies for up to six months ...so you can rear those babies and not loose your type of guppy if lose the males. Baby guppies are born every 28-31 days. They can eat newly hatched brine shrimps at birth, or finely crushed flake foods. They are completely independent, and can swim as soon as they are born, resulting in thier classification as live-bearers. Young guppies grow very fast, and know when to hide, so if you move them to another tank a few days after birth, they can be a challenge to catch.
By the age of two months my guppies are usually showing if they are male or female. I put my males and females in separate tanks to grow up a bit more. At this time, I can pick out the ones that I think I will used for breeders next, and make sure they are really the fish I want to use. Guppies can be left all together in one tank, if you are just enjoying your fish, and not working with breeding them. Guppies like a alkaline water pH 7.4. And I keep my fish at 70-74°F. Guppies can take higher tempetures, but it shortens their lives. If you take good care of your guppies, they will live 18 months to two years.
Guppies don't require heavy filtration, and are beautiful to watch in a planted or non planted tank.
The males have a longish fin on the bottom, that is the breeding apperatus, called the gonopodium. On the females, this same fin is rounded in shape, and usually they have a black dot looking place just behind that fin. I think of it as a window, for when the mother is nearly ready to give birth, you can see the babies' eyes through her.
So, to tell if you have boy guppies or girl guppies, you look at that bottom fin, past the 2 fins that show when they swim that are also on the bottom. They all have 3 fins on the bottom, and then you are following the line of the tail. It is the difference in these fins that you want to look at to tell the males from the females.
Article by Keith Pardee |
