Too many babies!!

[Chikadee]

Hey guys,

My guppy had babies AGAIN last night! That now brings my 10gal up to at least 15 fry plus all the other inhabitants (themselves alone make my tank well stocked) who are now clearly annoyed by all the extra fish. What in the world do I do with all of them??? I don't want to kill them, I dont' have any friends who want them, and I doubt my lfs would take such tiny fry back. Does anyone have any suggestions? Generally speaking, how old should fish be before they're accepted back at the lfs? If I have to euthanize, what is the best way to do it? Is anyone from the Detroit area who are willing to take them? Maybe feed them to your other fish? I am out of ideas! :?

On a totally unrelated note... My syno looks a bit bloated... is that a problem? he's still active and stuff, but I think all the fry are stressing him out and I'm afraid that might have made him develop some sort of disease... (dropsy?) Any suggestions on what to do about him?

Thanks guys!

 

[grimlock3000]

"My guppy had babies AGAIN last night!"

If you have males and females in the same tank, get used to this happening on a regular basis Even after you seperate the males and females, the females can have multiple batches of fry for a while.

I have a bunch of baby guppies myself, but soon I am going to seperate them. I expect the females to pop out a few fry that will get eaten (hopefully), but after a few months they should be OK, and I can always have more babies later by putting the sexes together.

 

[Chikadee]

I can get used to this happening... but I just don't know what to do with them all! What do other people do with all their fry? Maybe it's time I returned some of my females back to the lfs...

 

[Scottw68TN]

The LFS should a least take them for free. But if you want $ they will need to be much older. probably like an inch.

 

[TankGirl]

I think generally people keep guppies so they will have live food for their other fish, or they just keep males alone as specimen fish, since it is so easy for this to get out of hand. I have heard of people keeping guppies with turtles, since the turtles will keep the population in check. Otherwise, contact your LFS and ask them if they will take them, or if they know anyone who will. They might take them as feeders. I'll bet you will find someone who would love to have them. People who keep snakes and lizards often breed them as many smaller snakes will eat them out of their water dish, so you may find someone who keeps reptiles that would be interested. Good luck!

 

[Scottw68TN]

I was assuming they were the fancy guppies. If they are the feeder guppy type theyll probably let you dump them in there tank but no $$. Of coarse support your best LFS and don't dump them in the big chain tanks that would be the same euthanizing them. At least give an oscar a whack at em.

 

[grimlock3000]

I thought feeder guppies were just fancy guppies that no one wanted? What is the difference? The baby guppies I have are all guppies I bought as feeders, but my fish only ate three of them. Am I raising a bunch of ugly ducklings?

 

[Scottw68TN]

probably. The fancy guppies are vividly colored like sunburst guppys. right? I raised a few feeders for my oscar and they were just plain looking.

 

[grimlock3000]

Just read this link here, looks like I AM raising a bunch of Ugly Ducklings

http://home.hiwaay.net/~cwcjr/aqua/articles/guppies.htm

 

[Scottw68TN]

But i'm sure there good fish on the inside.

 

[grimlock3000]

This is a conversation from right after I got the feeders...

-Me "OK, they are not getting eaten, what should we do now? I am just going to take them back tomorrow"
-Wife "Lets keep them and see what pretty colors we get. These babies are so cute, I love them already"
-Me "OK, but we are going to need a bigger tank for them since we have too many fish. Seriously, we have too many fish"
-Wife "Sure, I really want to raise these guppies into pretty ones!!! These are the best fish ever!"

Shortly after than, I dropped $400+ on my 26g bowfront tank setup to save $2 worth of feeder guppies from overcrowding my 10g tank. All in an effort to make my wife happy. I wanted another tank, but was not planning to get anything expensive. I am going to not tell my wife the bad news and just pretend like we got some dud guppies :| My wife will probably love them even more if they are all ugly, since she will feel bad for them

 

[Scottw68TN]

Atleast you got the cool tank. And you can still get some fancies, theyll breed with the others you may get some wierd colors.

 

[Chikadee]

Yup, they're fancy guppies, that's why I kinda wanna keep the fry just to see what cool colors they are. I think what I'm going to do is keep my two males and return my 4 adult females back to the lfs and just wait for my fry to grow up and decide which ones I wanna keep then. The only problem is this- if I return all the females, will the males pick on the young females a lot? I'm afraid one of the guys will go in for an amorous move and end up hurting one of the babies! So should I keep at least one of the adult females to prevent this from happening? Or will the males leave the young females alone?

 

[Terry]

I'm getting confused here, fancy guppys, non-fancy guppys, feeder guppys. whats going on.
In the UK we have male guppys and female guppys and thats it, they come in loads of differant colours and tail shapes but thats it.

please will one of you explain what happening on the other side of the pond.

 

[Chikadee]

I am far from a guppy expert, but as far as I know, there are feeder guppies which are all really plain looking. They have smaller tails and even the males aren't colorful, well they have one or two dots of color but nothing like the fancy guppies that people keep as pets. And then there are fancy guppies (also known as delta guppies because they live in the delta areas where rivers flow into oceans or something) and the males have long flowing tails and are really bright and colorful. The females also have relatively large tails, bigger than feeder guppies but smaller than the males, but they are pretty plain looking, usually gray or tan. And then there are also different types of fancy guppies such as cobra guppies which are spotted and look kinda like a cheetah, and those come in different colors. Those females have prettier colors and more spotted tails... That's about all I know about guppies, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong about anything.

 

[TankGirl]

Chikadee, sounds right on the money! Feeder guppies are not colorful. If you look back on this thread on the first page, Grimlock posted a very nice link to an article discussing the different types of guppies.

 

[vega]

Ok, female guppy is totally in grey color and with small tail like std molly. Fancy female guppy normally is color from tail to 1/2 the body.

Male feeder with small tail (again look like std molly's tail) but fancy guppy have a large delta or sword tail that is almost 1/2 of its body size.

On behaviour side, u will find feeder are very nervous ALL the time. this is because they are from wild bred and the instict is still there. No matter how often u 'take care' the feeder or wheter they are born in ur tank, it will always nervous when u approach ur tank. the wild instict is in part of them; always (i kept feeder for ~6 years, cost that's the only fish i afford when i was kid,LOL).

In contrast, fancy tend to be 'gliding' around the tank. My fancy guppy are not even scare of net when i put net in my tank.

btw grim i bought 2 male and 3 female fancy guppy, err now (7 months later) i think i have 80~90 LOL.

Just dont bother getting another bigger tank, even sea is not big enuf for guppy LOL