How to Care for a Pregnant Guppy

How to Care for a Pregnant Guppy
by Darran Mansfield

Caring for guppies is usually really easy to do, but when it comes to caring for a pregnant guppy, that is very different. Certain considerations and adjustments need to be made to help her to give birth to healthy guppy fry with minimal stress.

A pregnant guppy can cause a fish keeper a great deal of stress, but it needn't be like that, as it's really not that hard to deal with. Most people think it's all going to go wrong, especially if they are new to it, but the truth is that guppies have been breeding successfully for hundreds of year on their own. Plus, since they are living in a nice clean warm tank with no predators apart from each other, they should be pretty much ok.

With all the above being said about guppies having babies on their own with no problems, that was in reference to wild guppies. However, we very rarely have a chance to buy wild ones anymore and they are all captive bred fish that have kind of had their wild instincts bred right out of them instead of importing them from the wild waters that are their natural homes.

Keeping tank born guppies does have its advantages over the wild ones if you look into it. For one thing, they don't have to endure a terribly stressful journey to the fish shop that will sell them. They are also a lot hardier and can deal with a few mistakes that the new in-experienced keeper may make.
The thing that you will notice with a pregnant guppy is that she doesn't really act any different from any of the other fish that are not even pregnant. She just goes about scouting around for food just like the rest of her tank mates.

The only time when a pregnant guppy will change her behavior is just before she is about to drop her babies, which are born live because guppies are livebearers. You will notice that she will start hiding more and more and it could take you a little detective work to try to find her. The reason a pregnant guppy will start hiding is because she is preparing to give birth to her babies within a day or two. She is hiding to try and help protect the babies and help bring up their survival rate from other fish that may be in the tank that may want to eat them.

Even though she goes to all this trouble in trying to protect her offspring, even she will eat the young herself! One way this can be prevented is to provide plenty of hiding places and make sure the female is well-fed throughout the whole pregnancy.

So, there you have it. A pregnant guppy isn't really that stressful to deal with when you simply take a step back and think about it. Things may be a bit bumpy during the first couple of births, but as time goes by you will get the hang of it and have lots of little guppies swimming around.

Darran has been writing articles online for nearly 3 years now. Not only does he specialize in Bonsai Trees, Portable BBQ's and Cooking but he also has a tremendous passion for Keeping Guppy Fish and raising tons of Poecilia Reticulata for many years. Goarticles.com