Guppies : The Fish for the Aquarium

The Guppy comes from South America. These fish are livebearers – the male has a copulatory organ that it uses to impregnate the female. The Males are the most Colourful and the females are dull in colour or have less colour as compared to males. It is interesting to watch the female grow fatter one day. The Females are larger in size than their male counterpart. Unless you want to provide fun and food for other fish in the tank (including other guppies) the fry should be removed. Guppies have been bred to include many different color patterns.
Maximum Size: The maximum length is 2.5 inches.
Minimum Tank Size: 10 gallons or larger tank is appropriate.
Life span: Average 2-3 years.
Care Level: The Guppy is a relatively easy fish to maintain.
Tank Conditions: Temperature 75 - 82°F; pH: 5.5 – 8.5.
Color: Guppy color variations that have been produced through breeding are numerous. Multiple color patterns can inhabit the same tank and will breed. It should be noted that by cross breeding color variations, you may end up with lack luster offspring.
Temperament: Guppies are the standard along with bettas and goldfish. Care needs to be taken if you want to seriously keep these fish. Larger fish and catfish will harass and even eat these slow moving fish. They should be kept in groups of three or more. Males are sometimes territorial and if you have too many males with few females, the males may harass the females trying to mate. Therefore it is best to have more females than males.
Diet: Omnivore - Use a good flake food as the basic diet. Some good supplements include bloodworms, tubifex worms, Tetra bits, and frozen brine shrimp. Some greens in their diet, such as Tetra Spirulina flakes are advisable
Care : Adding 1/2 tea spoon sea salt or common salt to 10 Lit of water improves the health of the guppies. It namally stops the nfection that might cope up on the scales due to algae.

Breeding Guppies Couldn’t be easier, it really is a good fish to start with. Breeding can be done one of two ways - you can either place the guppies in there own breeding tank or your can breed them in the community tank

Separate Breeding Tank : Breeding guppies in their own tank is a very nice way to go about breeding them, you have a lot more control over the conditions that they are bred in. You can also control the parents, selecting the colouration of male or female of your choice of which you couldn’t do in a community tank. There is also the upside of having no other tank mates that could eat the fry and once the fry are born the parents can be moved to another tank and there you can raise your fry. The down side to having a separate breeding tank is one it will take up more space and two is more equipment layout costs.

Community Breeding Tank : Breeding guppies in the community tanks can be great fun and very exciting as you just never know the colouration you will be from the mixed breeding which is great fun because you do get some really nice colours and combinations. The down side to breeding guppies in a community tank is that you don’t have control over the breeding colouration mixing, you don’t have as much control over the conditions as you would have in there own breeding tank because of other fish may require specific conditions and the greatest down side it the tank mates just love to feast on the guppy fry and it can be hard to catch the guppy fry in such a large tank and yes I know that you can place the female into ones of those breeding traps but unless you know that they are going to drop within a day or two I wouldn’t advise them as they can really stress the female guppy out which is in turn bad for the guppy fry.