hi im new to this and ive set up my first community tank. i have 5 guppies and 1 is pregnant. i was wondering what others did with the young? cheers, james

Some will keep them in the breeder nets or special fry tanks. I just give mine ample areas to hide until they are big enough to not be a threat of being eaten. They make artificial breeder grass or you can get some plans.

ok cheers. what do i do with them if i keep them alive? i dont want to be over run with guppies because of the risk of inbreeding

Can't help you there. If you have males and females, they will mate.

Let the parents eat the fry (if they will) or find a pet shop that will take them once they have grown up.

Let the parents eat the fry!!! LOL you are cruel!!!!

I have some fry too at the moment (YAY!!!) I tried letting them be in the tank but the ones that didn't get eaten got sucked into the filter and died within a day or two of birth. Currently, I have some guppy swordtail and platy fry. I kept the first 2 in a breeder net (a two room net) until they had their babies. Then I removed the moms and just kept the fry in the net. I let the last one have her babies in the main part of the tank with no other inhabitants in the tank and plenty of live plants for them to hide in. Mostly wisteria. When I saw she had the fry I moved her back to the main tank and put the fry in the net with the rest. Currently, there are 3 more soon to be moms in the big tank waiting to drop and at least 30 fry in the net waiting to grow big and strong. I am mostly likely going to try to find a store that will pay (or at least take them for store credit) for them. If not then I will probably sell them myself. I don't want to keep them and I don't want to see them used as feeder fish so beyond that I'm not really sure. I have to call the manager of one of the stores around here tomorrow and see what he says. As to the inbreeding.....well, if your guppy was pregnant when you got her then chances are that the fry your going to have are already inbreeds so it's not much difference.

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10gal fry tank planted with Wisteria, Java Moss, Anuabis and Anacharis
35gal Sponge Bob tank with live bearing tropicals (daughters tank)
15gal planted with Swords, Java Fern, Wisteria and Red Rubin housing 10 fry and 2 bladder snails
55 gal with Oscar (future planted tank with angels and flowerhorns)
55 gal Community tank (platys, mollys, guppys, glass catfish, angels, phantom tetra, red eye tetra and swordtails)

Hi, my name is Chris, I've been breeding guppies for about 15 years.

If you want to raise guppy fry in the community tank it is a good idea to give them good hiding places. Java moss is great, or you can unravel a nylon pot scrubber (find them in the kitchen section of most grocery stores, rinse well like any tank decoration, unravel until you have a mess of what looks like yarn. The spaces are big enough for fry, too small for adult fish) The strongest, healthiest fry will evade the adults. This will also act as an auto-culling method, since the ones that are small, slow and unhealthy you won't probably even see. Since female fish can have as many as 40 fry every 28 days you probably don't want to deal with that many. You may wish to buy two, one to anchor at the bottom and one to float at the top. You can clean them by running them under the hot water tap whenever you like, they come in lots of colors.

Stores sometimes do offer store credit in trade for nice, healthy fish, but it can involve some running around, and you should always call first. If you just show up they might be too busy to talk to you, and you don't want to irk them. Or worse yet, you might have gone cross town with a bucket only to find out they have no tank space at the moment. I've had a lot of luck with Freecycle. Individual people who have aquariums will often see your offer on freecycle and come to the house to pick up fish, and you can specify that you only want people who are going to keep fish as pets, not as live food, that is, if you care. You can also join the local fish club and see about trading with other guppy people.

Producing fish that other people will pay cash for is an entirely different animal.

he he
when i had some guppy fry long back
i released the fry into my cichlid tank :D

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~ Max
29 Gallon Tall Planted and running Eheim 2217
~~ a German Blue ram pair, 9 Harlequin rasboras, 2 octilincus, 2 Dwarf neon rainbows and a honey sunset Gaurami

16 gallon Bowfront tank ~~ 3 Neon Tetras, red tailed shark, 1 angel (its a real bully), BN pleco and an albino BN pleco.