How to Care for Baby Guppies

from wikiHow - The How to Manual That You Can Edit

Guppies are beautiful friendly freshwater fish that reproduce very easily. Their fry are very easy to take care of if you know what you are doing.

Steps

Survey your tank setup: Guppy fry are an excellent food source for most types of fish (even their parents). Separate fry from adult fish if possible. Placing them in their own separate tank is best, but if you do not have an extra aquarium you'll need to get a mesh "breeding tank". These devices go inside your existing aquarium, and serve as a holding pen for the fry or the adults. If you are going to keep the fry in this container, make sure it is mesh, otherwise they might swim out.

1. Check the Water quality: Guppy fry will grow fast when their water quality is good. To keep it pristine conditions use a test kit and test for ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate. Keep ammonia at 0 ppm., nitrite at 0 ppm., and nitrate at less than 10 ppm. Keep doing weekly water exchanges, but exercise caution not to suck up any fry.
   
2. Be sure you feed them well: Baby guppies need high quality foods to grow and be healthy. When they are first born use fry food or finely crushed flake food. As they get bigger keep using flake food.
   
3. Use a sponge filter or a very low power mechanical filter to keep water clean. Make sure the filter has some kind of protective sponge over the intake to prevent small fry from being sucked in.
   
4. Keep the water temperature at 75-80F. Do not let the water temperature get outside this range.
   
5. Check for illnesses: Diseased fry have a very low chance of surviving. Remove any sick fry immediately. Do not medicate a tank with fry in it, as it is too difficult for a regular fish keeper to use the right dosage.
   
6. Watch them grow: Monitor their growth, and place them back into the main aquarium once they are big enough not to be eaten. Make sure they are all growing fairly uniformly. Once they are all big enough, release them and watch them interact with their expanded world.
   

Tips

• Breeding guppies is fairly easy, though you might want to setup a breeding tank and keep a male and a female in it. Once the female becomes pregnant, remove the male. Once the female gives birth, remove the female.
  
• Fry are not in any way reliant on their parents. In fact, the parents will eat their newborns if given the chance.
  

Warnings

• Don't keep babies with parents or other fish; they will eat them
  
• If using a mechanical filter make sure it is very weak or has something covering the intake so the fry don't get sucked up.
  

Related wikiHows

• How to Keep Guppies Healthy
  
• How to Breed Guppies
  
• How to Know Which Fish to Put Together in a Tank
  

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Keeping and Breeding Guppies

Author: WaterWorks Aquatics

There are not many fish capable of brightening up a drab home aquarium quite as well as the guppy (Poeacilia reticulata) . There exceptional range of colour variations and stunningly long tail extensions have made them the most popular aquarium fish throughout the world.

Guppies are hardy little fish living a good 2-3 years in a well maintained aquarium. They grow no more than 2.3cm in size and are very peaceful towards other fish in the aquarium. Guppies will feed on most good brand flake foods but will benefit from frozen foods being used once or twice a week.Guppies do great in water of ph around 7.5 and fairly hard. Although they will acclimatise well to other conditions. Contrary to popular belief, guppies must be kept in warm tropical water at around 24 degrees c. This is critical to their well being and will encourage the fish to be active, colourful and healthy.Breeding guppies is relatively easy. They are live bearers, meaning they give birth to live young and do not lay eggs. If you are considering keeping guppies you should ideally buy all the same strain, or colour variant, and have at least 2 females to every male. This ensures that the females do not become stressed by over breeding. After mating the females will be pregnant for up to 30 days. Once the young are born you have two choices. They can be born in the aquarium and run the risk of being predated on by other fish, including their parents. Or you can buy a breeding trap that allows you to keep the fry (baby fish) separate from the rest of the tank until they are large enough to look after themselves. Fry should be fed a mixture of powdered flake food and frozen daphnia.

All in all keeping guppies can be extremely rewarding whether you keep them, to breed or just to brighten up those dull winter days.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/pets-articles/keeping-and-breeding-guppies-3858242.html

About the Author

Aquarium and Pond Supplies

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

Maintaining guppy fish

Maintaining a guppy is relatively easy compared to making fish and goldfish. Guppy does not require a filter and aerator if kept in a small population. Replacement of water can be cloudy when water is already visible, it is intended that the soluble impurities in the water, ammonia and seedling disease usually disappear because such conditions will inhibit the growth of fish, a dirty environment also resulted in the emergence of various kinds of germs.

Guppy are omnivores or eating everything, so the food is also diverse. Guppy food to be food of life (life food) and artificial food. Each food type has advantages and disadvantages.

Living foods contain good nutrition, such as silk worms contain proteins and fats that are very good for growth. Blood worms and mosquito larvae contain high protein, good for the mother guppy because it increases the quality of eggs. Live food is also more easily digested by the fish quickly and do not damage the water quality if there are leftovers. The weakness of the natural food is limited in the wild ketersediaanya so the price is relatively expensive, live food is also potentially carry germs on fish because it comes from open water.

Therefore it is necessary to care for live sterile food from germs. Artificial food has advantages in terms of price and cleanliness. The drawback lies in the less nutritionally complete and often contaminate water. But now there is also an artificial food that has a complete nutritional content but are quite expensive.

The temperature is good for the guppy between 25-28 degrees Celsius. At lower temperature guppy susceptible to disease because their immune systems declined. A disease that generally attacks the guppy among other fungi, dropsy and white spots. Guppy fish is always healthy for maintenance should be an affordable place the sun at least 2-3 hours / day, although indirectly. When guppy already stricken with the disease should be immediately separated from other fish and treated separately so as not to rub off on other fish.

White spot disease can be overcome by increasing the temperature of the aquarium with a heater to 30-32 degrees Celsius, whereas other fungal diseases and parasites of fish by soaking in a solution of salt or chemical solutions such as "Germ Free" or "Blitz Ict" sold in stores. Each drug has a purpose and use different rules.

Guppy health is also influenced by genetic factors or heredity. Therefore, if we seriously have to consider the origin of guppy is whether the result of inbreeding, linebreeding, or crossbreeding. Tillers arising from linebreeding have good health so as not susceptible to disease, whereas chicks from inbreeding process is easy to disease because of weakened immunity and the emergence of recessive traits of the offspring is generally harmful because inbreeding is hereditary.

This genetic problem will be discussed further in the title itself, because the extent of the discussion of genetics. Source : http://guppy-farm.blogspot.com

Types of guppy disease

There are times when our pets have diseases that make us upset, which may be caused because the water tank that is rarely cleaned so that the growing number of bacteria in the tank which then transmitted to our fish or fish which is also already have a contagious disease to other fish.

If not immediately then we treat the fish could die, it's some little fish disease and treatment.



a. Saprolegnia.
The characteristics of the affected fish is white patches on the skin of fish. Treatment of alcohol metapen drops in place as much as 2 drops in one gallon of water / 4 1.12) liters of water. The next step give the salt and let some time.

Give the hydrogen peroxide to kill bacteria attached to fishing nets for 15 to 30 seconds. Or it could also be used malachite green or blue or acriflavin methyline as a disinfectant. How to fish treatment that bacterial infection should be given additional space before treating.

b. Swelling or Bloat Disease
Fish was restless, the body looks bigger because of bloating. This is caused by inflammation of the intestine of fish. Isolate the affected fish, and enter into one gallon of water that had been spiked with 2 tablespoons full of salt British. Leave on for 4 or 6 hours, then add water for 12 hours. Once cured can be returned to the place of origin.

c. Mouth Fungus
Feature of the affected fish mouth fungus is easily seen from the white color which is located in front of his mouth. White mushrooms are very large colonies that attach to the fish's mouth, so shut the mouth of the fish to eat can not breathe and can cause fish to die. Aureomycin treatment using 25 mg to 1 gallon of water add 1 drop of iodine and metopen 2 drops.

d. Gills Disease
Feature of the affected fish gill inflammation usually caused by viral organisms. Characteristics of this disease gill opening, lazy meal and always above the water surface. The disease is caused by several bacteria and fungi and the most difficult to overcome.

Feature of this fish when dying their gills looked flushed and decompose faster than his body. Some ways you've successfully done is to give metapen mercurochrome soaked some time together and do a treatment with salt water and give a bigger place and spacious.

e. Bloating Disease
The characteristics of the affected fish stomach inflammation, among others, the fish seem to have trouble swimming to the bottom. The fix to give 1 teaspoon salt Britain every 1 / 2 liter of water, and soak the fish for 3 to 4 hours, then move the fish into a place of high altitude water 3 times a fish body. Still there are some diseases that are commonly known, such as aphids or needle. (Sri Mulyadi, Ir Wantoro). Source : House of guppy/

These book for treatment and care the guppy fish.

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Guppy fry development

Perhaps, before your female Guppy giving birth, you should consider what would you do with the fry. You must decide several things. Do you want to be associated with many seeds are born monthly? If not, consider talking with local stores to see if they will take Guppy fry. In the U.S., it customery for Local Fish shop to take a good fry for trade or monetary payment. Pet supply stores do not take for trade or for monetary payment. Infact, they will take your cooking, but only as a donation from your side. So, check your local phone book for Aquarium stores and check first. Many other countries require you to have a license to sell fish, so check with your area of law.

If you decide to raise the young fry, trying to make a few tanks to let the fry begin to grow in and out of each tank immediately, before young people come so the tank can cycle before fish are added. Do this ride "fishless" either by ammonia cycling (adding 3 drops of ammonia per day until nitrite forms), or by taking water from the existing tank and filling the new tank with all siphoned debris and water. debris from ammonia which started cycling, and any water provided from the existing tank will have some nitrifying bacteria already in it providing a quick start for the nitrogen cycle. If possible, exchange filtration m media from an existing tank to a new tank so the process would be accelerated.

In a frying tank, you must close any suction device with a material to stop the seeds from being sucked to filtration. I suggest you find some fine bridal tulle or netting and cut a piece to cover suction tube and hold in place with rubber bands. Some suggest using nylon stockings, which you can use until you find the net, but I do not recommend using all the time because it will interfere with filtration process. Fry tank can be a simple tank, meaning all you have to provide is filtration, heating and lighting. I do not have any type of gravel in my fry tanks as this allows very easy cleaning of the tank. Like fry mature and are separated, then I place gravel and plants in a larger tank for them to continue to grow. Set the temperature to 80F if possible to allow maturation and then as the age of fries, you can reduce the temp back to 78F.

After the new tank cycling when the level is zero ammonia, zero nitrite, and nitrate is 40ppm or less, then you can add the fry. You should feed fry several times per day. If possible during the first four weeks feed them as often as time will allow. Some feed fry 5 times per day. The first four weeks of their lives into the body building and muscle. Tropical flake food grinding powder to feed the fry. That would be great if you are able to hatch brine shrimp to feed fry several times per week. The baby brine shrimp provide a source of nutrition to enhance fry color. Do not use color as an increase shale shale does not provide correct vitamins the seed needs to grow well.

At the end of the first four weeks, cooking began to develop into sexual guppies male or female. At the age of six weeks, they become sexually active. So, between four and six weeks, you may want to consider separating the fry into groups of women, men. Do this by taking one fish out at the time and put in small containers with water from the tank and with a magnifying glass to see whether gonopodium or places still buried. More often it is better to see the place of the pregnant female. Mix ups can happen and not to worry because the fish will be chosen out put into the correct group. This is only a little less to worry about what you would do with the seed of all the young females if you decide to separate them.

Between the ages of six weeks and six months, you should consider putting some of the seed bed because of defects in some fry. This is a procedure called culling which means to take the bad fish. Most shops will take the seed be destroyed from your hand, but do not expect anything in return, because they are doing you. See pages about putting fish to sleep.

At the age of six months which was then considered an adult guppies. So, you still have to find someone to take them. A donation on your part at this age is considered highly recommended, but think about all the effort you put into improving frying. If the local fish stores will not trade or pay for your efforts, consider asking that their distributors and get names and phone numbers. Distributor Check to see if they'll take you fishing.

Distributors pay more money for bigger fish. That is, if the week four cooking too much to handle, the distributor will carry them, but probably only for a few dollars. But if you wait til they are six months, you will probably get 50 cents per fish. Same applies to trade or receive payment from a local fish store. The bigger the better. Remember to check with your area of law. Reference http://www.aquariumhobbyist.com/guppies/fry.html