What are some good first livebearers?

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hulkamaniac

Aquarium Advice Freak
Joined
Jun 7, 2006
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455
Location
Wichita, KS
I've got an empty 20L sitting around right now. I want to get into breeding as it's an aspect of the hobby I haven't explored yet. I figured I'd start with some of the livebearers since you basically just add water, the fry are (allegedly) easy to raise and the LFS will probably take them off my hand as they're almost always in demand. Which of the common livebearers are best to start off with - guppies, platies, mollies or swordtails? I want to get experience with raising these fish and hopefully move on to betta breeding.
 
I have to say that, right now, I'm biased toward my blue parrot variatus platies. They were featured in Tropical Fish Hobbyist a couple of months back and I just had to have some. I bought a pair from Aquabid and they are beautiful!!! They aren't seen very often in the hobby anymore. They are a different species than the platyies you see at the typical fish store (Xiphophorus maculatus). Blue parrot variatus belong in Xiphophorus variatus. When I told the guy at the fish store about them he couldn't wait until my fry were old enough to carry in the store.

Yes, she had two babies in the shipping bag before I could even get her into the tank. Those two are fine and she's since dropped her whole load in my 29. If you look hard enough under the plants youwill se about 20 little tiny blue parrot babies!!!

here's a link: http://fish.mongabay.com/species/Xiphophorus_variatus.html

here's a link to some pics (not mine)http://images.google.com/images?svnum=10&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&safe=off&q=Xiphophorus+variatus&spell=1

Although, mine look just like the first pic only brighter. Blue body, yellow dorsal fin, and red tail.......awesome!!!
 
guppies, any swordtail gold, pineapple, black, etc,. , Mollies all live bearers, prolific. Can have multiple sets of fry from the same mating. I know this to be true because my dad's black molly had babies a month after the male died, and she had no other tank mates.... SHe had one litter before he passed away, so we know he was the daddy.
 
I'm kind of leaning toward fancy guppies since they're in such demand around here.

The Tequila sunrise guppies in particular appeal to me, but it seems I'm only able to find the males and can't find the females anywhere.
 
Ooh, the sunrise is an expensive guppy. You probably will only be able to find female fancy guppies, not tequila sunrise. When they breed you may get a mixture of different types of guppies that way though. Because of the limited amount of guppy females for sale I would reccomend starting with Platies or swords. They are easy to find, personally I am biased to my marigold and pineapple swords. Koi's are nice too but they are expensive. I also like Red Wag swords and platies.
 
Alshain said:
Ooh, the sunrise is an expensive guppy. You probably will only be able to find female fancy guppies, not tequila sunrise. When they breed you may get a mixture of different types of guppies that way though. Because of the limited amount of guppy females for sale I would reccomend starting with Platies or swords. They are easy to find, personally I am biased to my marigold and pineapple swords. Koi's are nice too but they are expensive. I also like Red Wag swords and platies.

Petsmart here in town has tequila sunrise males occasionally. I'm not so concerned about crossing bloodlines or anything at this point. As long as I can get healthy fish I don't care that they're mongrels instead of purebreds. I was leaning toward guppies since I'm told they're not as cannibalistic as platies are.
 
hulkamaniac said:
Petsmart here in town has tequila sunrise males occasionally. I'm not so concerned about crossing bloodlines or anything at this point. As long as I can get healthy fish I don't care that they're mongrels instead of purebreds. I was leaning toward guppies since I'm told they're not as cannibalistic as platies are.

Yeah I've seen em at my Petsmart, thats why I say they are on the expensive side, cost about twice as much as normal fancies. If you don't care about bloodlines, Petsmart also carries female fancies. As for swordtails/platies being more cannibalistic, I think you've been misled. All livebearers offer no post natal care. Once they are born they are live food if they don't get out of the way. The mother will not eat while birthing so they do have time to get out of the way but if other opportunistic fish are around then they may become a snack. Thats why livebearers are best removed to a breeding net or chamber for birthing.

Guppies do however tend to breed on a whim whereas platies and swordtails tend to require the water quality be near perfect and they want to have more room in the tank to swim around before they will breed.
 
I've had platies before and never had any problem with them breeding. My problem was keeping the fry alive. They all either got eaten or died because I didn't really know how to feed them.
 
I've been using Hikari First Bites. I just stick my finger in the bag and then brush off whatever sticks into the breeding chamber. I tried the same flake food for the adults at first but it kept clumping and then they wouldnt touch it. I used the Lee's 3 way breeding chamber when the fish got to that point and then pulled her out when it looked like her gravid spot was gone and the fry were getting "adventurous". Unfortunately I later saw 4 fry in the tank which quickly got eaten. The fry are still happily living in the floating breeding chamber. Only downside to it is that there is really no way to clean the chamber while the tiny little fry are in it so if any fry don't make it, then they have to decay and you have to watch your ammonia very carefully.
 
Alshain said:
I've been using Hikari First Bites. I just stick my finger in the bag and then brush off whatever sticks into the breeding chamber. I tried the same flake food for the adults at first but it kept clumping and then they wouldnt touch it. I used the Lee's 3 way breeding chamber when the fish got to that point and then pulled her out when it looked like her gravid spot was gone and the fry were getting "adventurous". Unfortunately I later saw 4 fry in the tank which quickly got eaten. The fry are still happily living in the floating breeding chamber. Only downside to it is that there is really no way to clean the chamber while the tiny little fry are in it so if any fry don't make it, then they have to decay and you have to watch your ammonia very carefully.

I had the fry in the chamber and didn't care for it at all. I'm going to try to use a tank divider to separate them from the parents.
 
There is loads of the sunraise guppys on Aqubid even some breeder stock of 6 2m /4f. The sunraise will only breed to sunraise guppys. There are alot of guppys out there that will breed only to some of there kind. Like the blue moscows or the moscows period will only bred o females of there spices.
 
Weasel F. said:
There is loads of the sunraise guppys on Aqubid even some breeder stock of 6 2m /4f. The sunraise will only breed to sunraise guppys. There are alot of guppys out there that will breed only to some of there kind. Like the blue moscows or the moscows period will only bred o females of there spices.

I just checked there and found nothing. What are you putting in as a search string?
 
maxwell1295 said:

Yeah, I saw that one, but it's for males. I can find males here locally. Females are what I'm looking for. I can't seem to find them anywhere. I checked a couple of on-line stores and even googled for them. I can't even find pics of a female tequilla sunrise guppy so I have something to compare to when I go to the store. I wonder if my LFS can order them for me?
 
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