Guppy Q

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Coleallensmom

Planted Tank Enthusiast
Joined
Oct 6, 2010
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Location
Pennsylvania
How soon can you tell the sexes of baby guppies? My son got his first guppies a few months back and one of the females had a batch of fry last week. We were able to save five of them. They are one week old today and have grown tremendously in the last few days. I have begun to see beginings of black/yellow coloration on all of their fins/tail fins. If our male is the father, he is a green cobra. (Mother is your basic orange fancy guppy.) Is it possible that they are all males? Can you tell the sexes apart at this early of an age?
 
Its way too early to sex them.

You will probably have to wait until they grow out considerable until you can sex them by the tails.

Are the fry as colorful as the parents btw? Your females are outragious.
 
They are all a peachy orange color with black on all of their fins. It's hard to get a good pic of them, but these will give you a general idea.

Taken at 10 days old-

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Female #2 had her fry today...as far as I can tell she had around 5 just like the first female. I went up to check in on the older fry; an hour later my boys came home from school and found the babies. Amazing the size difference in between newly born and 1.5 week old fry.

How soon can the fry be introduced to the tank w/o fear of being eaten?
 
I currently have 11 guppy babies (now 3 weeks old) and a swordtail baby 2 weeks. The babies are growing very well but with the agressive swordtail i have whose hunting mode really kicks in when there are fry swimming around, i think I will wait a while still before letting them out. Have noticed the fry now, since growing up and eating flaky food instead of the powder stuff, have put a strain on the tank, where I have to do make regular water changes.

On the bright side though, I am selling them (when they big enough to be moved into the community tank) & have buyers already lined up:cool:
 
All fry we could find (5 from the first female and 6 from the 2nd female) are currently in a floating breeder. Two of the newest fry were out all night and managed to not get eaten. Thinking of letting the almost 2 week old fry free in the tank. They are pretty good at coming to the surface now when they see food. I had originally told my son that any fry were to fend for themselves (there are plants in the tank for hiding) but somehow he talked me into rounding them up into the breeder. Not sure what I want to do at this point; but I need to come up with a game plan.
 
I think we might keep 1 or 2 guppies and then ofcourse the swordtail but with the rest we gonna sell a few and give some to the kindergarten for their aquarium as well.
 
It really isn't to early to sex them, if you use a magnifying glass and a flash light you will be able to see a black dot just above their anal fin, that indicates that it is female. However, if this feels like it's to much to do, wait about 3 weeks for the anal fin to become pointed but watch closely to the others, I'm still catching "new" males in my three month old fry that I had previously believed were female. You'll want to catch their gender as soon as possible. They are not called the millions fish for nothing. I learned that the hard way, I now have over 40 guppies and counting.
What I highly suggest is keeping the males and females separate. Only put them together for desired breeding. So far my largest batch to be born was some where between 20 and 26. you may put the babies back in with they adults once they are considered big enough to not be thought of as food.
Just a small tip, if you feed them dried baby shrimp I highly recommend crushing all of the shrimp in a zip lock bag. Make sure that they are fine pieces, you can do this by rolling a round object over the bag. After that is done put the shrimp back into it's container. Instead of reaching in to pick their food up like one would do with flake or pellet food, it's better to gently tap the shrimp out of the container and into the tank. Believe me, the crushed shrimp will stick to your fingers like Velcro now.
 
Thanks for the tips. All five fry are doing great and are three weeks old today but it's difficult to see a gravid spot as they have black markings all over their bodies/tail fins. Their mother had 7 more fry this morning, so I definitely need to figure this out soon!
 
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