Little fish

Well.... buggar! I bought three guppies a couple of weeks ago. One male, tiny wee thing with a big frilly tail so I call him Bruce. Two females, one little one and a bigger one. I didn't pick them out, there were so many in the tank at the pet shop it was a case of whoever swims into the net. No worries.

Well the little female, as yet, unnamed, has been getting fatter and fatter. Yesterday I went out and bought some fake grass plants so any babies she had could hide in them... that is what you are supposed to do.

Last night she was looking more like a tadpole. Very round!

This morning she looks like she's been on a weight watchers diet and is slim and trim. NO BABIES! I reckon the rest of 'em ate 'em. What a buggar!

Bloody cannibals!

The other option for babies is to put a small plastic container into the tank and I guess put mummy in it before she has her babies.... but what's to stop mummy having a big feed?

Apparently, the fry are supposed to be scooped up in a net and put into the container and they can live in there quite happily until they are big enough to cope on their own.

I was not going to sit up all night awaiting a guppy to possibly give birth so I could scoop the babies.

I'm also guessing I would need to put little holes in the container to let the water move through otherwise the babies would end up living in a nasty puddle.....

Oh well, not crying over this one, just a bit miffed.

I don't even know how big the babies are supposed to be!

Guppies are live bearers, they pop out little fish not eggs so you'd think they'd be at least ONE baby that had managed to make it to the safety of the grass stuff. I have stared into that grass in the hope of spotting something moving but apart from the odd tiny bit of flotsam, I haven't spotted anything... unless the tiny bits of flotsam ARE the babies.... Maybe I should see if I can see anything through the magnifying glass?

Maybe I'll call the bigger female Minnie Dean? :rolleyes:

She seems intent on muscling in on the smaller female, or she was last night.

Poop!

Yakut

If you go to the shop that sold you the fish, they should be able to sell you a special unit which floats and has slots in the ends to allows water to pass though. You put mum in there when she is like a tadpole again and this time you wont lose them. Dont worry as they breed like flies it wont be long before you have a 2nd lot

We have guppies too - and at first went to all the bother with a separate floating net to keep the babies safe - but found others which had successfully hidden themslves in the tank survived just as well. They are really tiny at the start but after a week are a bit easier to see - so maybe there are still a few alive. They seem to hang about close to the surface of the water at first - so have a look there!!

The shop we went to had one of those cages but it was too big for my tank.
Mine is only a 22 gallon, which is a hell of a lot of water if you spill it on the carpet but not that much in an aquarium.

The woman who talked to us suggested the little plastic pot, she said you can get margarine traveling pots from the chemist????? Well I had no idea what she was on about but she then said any little plastic pot would work. I went for the fake plant option because the only thing in the tank was a small fake rock. All the live plants I bought came down with a nasty green algae and I had to toss them out.

One of the fake ones is silk, it is quite amazing, it's like a grass but the tiny blades are silk threads and they move with the water. Just the ticket for tiny fry to hide in I would have thought. I'll keep an eye out and see if anything grows. It's pretty clean in there so I would have thought I'd see something moving... you never know.

I read that the females get a dark spot underneath when they are pregnant and they both have black spots. The bigger one developed a couple, one each side, just after I got her. Maybe in a couple of weeks or so, she'll produce some babies.

I guess I can sell them back to the pet shop? I dunno.

I also have one of those brown spotty plecos or catfish. His name is Dyson. He gets quite big apparently so he might need to look for a new home eventually too. He's still small so a new home is a way off yet.

The trouble with getting tropical fish is choosing which ones!!!

I think I might put rummy nosed tetras on my list. They are quite neat.

I lost a cardinal tetra last week. Don't know what happened. One day it was swimming about, the next there was only half of it left and the remaining half was stuck in the plastic grate thing that goes over the heater.

I've got three of them left now and two lemon tetras, the Pleco and the guppies.

I lost a Serpae tetra and two harlequins.

I know how fast a fish can snuff it so I refuse to buy anything over about $6. No point.

I'd LOVE a marine aquarium with a Picasso fish but that's never going to happen. The last time I looked, the marine aquariums were really expensive and the Picasso fish was around $70 - $80. Chances are, I'd get it home and find it floating the next day. Pooof $70 - $80 gone. Nah, I'll stick to my wee fish.

Yakut

I have some java moss That I can send you. It has doubled in size in my sons tank and probably needs a trim. It is a dense stringy dark green plant. The small ones will hide inside it.
Let me know if you would like some

it's a lot cheaper to make your own aquarium. several sheets of plexglas, some RTV gasket compound, some stainless or aluminium angles, a box of stainless bolts, a few corner plexglas pyramids and a tube of silicon sealant.

from the list of ingredients the mechanically minded can work out how to build it and the rest will scratch their heads and wonder... which set do you lot each fit in?

Are you sure its 22 gallons and not 22L?
22 gallons doesn't sound too small to put a plastic breeding trap in?
how many buckets of water did it take to fill it?

I had to get tanks made for the turtles. One was 36 inches long and 18 inches deep, the other was 30 inches and 18 deep. I also ordered some glass to be cut to the dimensions I'd figured out so I could make a canopy.
The bigger tank sat below at one end of the wooden frame I made, the smaller one, which had one end only two inches high, sat level with the top of the big tank, shorter end towards the big tank. The canopy sat over the big tank and joined with the small tank to make a covered in ramp. I had to use a bit of resin wooden wall for a ramp which was wired on to the side of the big tank and hooked over the side of the small tank to form a ramp.

It took up heaps of room so once the turtles were big enough, they went outside.

I now have their tank out in the garage, filter, all the 'doings', doing nothing.

One of the tanks has become a crypt for two unfortunate mice.

The whole kaboodle cost a ruddy fortune.

Easier to buy the tank, by the time you've siliconed it together and made sure it doesn't leak, not to mention buying the glass.
Added support strips of glass to help weld the sides together..... nah.

Putting that canopy together was bad enough. The house stunk of silicon and it got everywhere. I had to make sure the sides were supported while the silicon dried and didn't slide together all skew whiff.

By the time I had done all this, I found the filter wasn't big enough and it was a bigun. I think it's a Fluval 304. Turtles are grubby creatures, feed them in the tank and you have the smell of rotting fish the next day, unless you fed them pellets. I could have done with an under gravel filter but then they would have ripped it up. It probably would have been fine for one turtle, male cos they are smaller, but a male and female, too much!

Yakut

Guppy babies are big enough to see without a magnifying glass. They are about as big as This: length: ___ head : o

We've had guppies for as long as I can think (but we haven't got any right now) and when we were little kids we used our potty as a birthing container for the females. It was stored under my bed so was always available. When there was a big one (look from top and it is VERY obvious), catch it by dipping potty into aquarium and wait until babies are born. At first they sink to the bottom so in your case there may some be hiding between the stones or whatever you have as a ground cover.

Once the babies were born we returned the female to the main tank and let the potty stand on top of the aquarium. Until dad came home. If he saw it he returned the babies to the main tank because we already had far too many. If he didn't see it - well, I think I need not elaborate.

The most embarassing thing for my mum was when one of us came down in our pyjamas to show off guppy babies in the potty to visitors[].

Guppies survive almost any hardship, low temperatures, etc. So hopefully, in a day or two, a few will rise to the surface or hide in the plant you bought. It then is the time to catch them and keep separately. I'd use a floating margarine container.

None of the buckets around here are trustworthy when it comes to putting water into the tank, they've all had something nasty in them and I wouldn't want to poison them... so it was many many trips with a 2.5 litre jug.

I get confused with tanks because some of them are sold as gallons and some are in litres.

I lost the little manual I got with it, shortly after I put it somewhere safe :rolleyes:

I spent quite a few eye aching minutes looking into the tank with a magnifying glass but I wasn't exactly sure what sized fry I was looking for.

I think I'll do the margarine container thing next time. Thanks SG for the offer of moss stuff.

Do you think I need to put tiny holes in the container or not?
If mum goes into the container and has her babies overnight or while I'm not looking, will she eat them?

I nearly bought a sheet thing of plastic grass stuff but it was a bit too expensive and I wasn't sure that it would help with keeping the tank clean. Having to syphon the stones to get the much out is one thing, tu tuing about with a dripping mat of plastic grass goes into the too hard basket for me. Less is more I reckon. I learnt that with the turtles... they were at the other end of the cleaning scale though. A major job cleaning those critters out.

It's a bit worrying that they are being sold at all in my opinion. They start off small and cute and don't need a huge tank or filter but by the time they are adults.... Woo hooo! big time maintenance and expense. They like to escape and the last thing NZ needs is another introduced beastie breeding and taking over the waterways.

There are SO many of them for sale on TM.

The pet shop we went into yesterday had three big lizards too! Odd looking things they are. Bearded Dragons and so forth.

I'll stick to keeping my two turtles outside in their bath enclosure and the little fish in the aquarium and if anyone asks me my opinion on whether they should get a turtle, my answer will be simple, 'no'.

Yakut

I used to "breed" guppies when I was a kid. I would transfer the females out of the main huge bowl into a glass when they looked like they were almost ready to pop - unfortunately, even though we did this, the female giving birth invariably used to pop them out and then would turn around and devour most of them[}] Gosh it was a hard job to get the young to survive at times. Mind you, they always had heaps. Almost enough to skin, bone and fillet

If you really want to raise guppies I would get a second tank. Put lots of plants in it, put your girl back in about two and a half weeks from now and she will produce the kids. Take her out when she looks slim again and start feeding the kids...

They grow much better in a reasonable size tank and since you are likely to end up with dozens well grown fish are far easier to rehome . Guppies are great little fish, I love watching the males colour up and seeing what patterns and colours they are.

Whe n I was breeding guppies I had a birthing tank (about the size of a margarine tub) that floated in the main tank. It had a slotted bottom so the fry could escape being eaten by the female. Any that didn't make use of this facility were usually eaten and contributed to the improvement in guppy genetics[^]. You can make one yourself from a margarine tub and some of that mesh stuff they use to wrap kiwi fruit in. The holes just have to beig enough for the fry ( ___ ) and too small for a fat female guppy
( ________ )

Ha, Bruce, the male guppy would fit through that small gap, he is really tiny but has a big opinion of himself, the way he zips about the top of the tank fluttering his tail in front of the ladies. What a stud!

Nah, I don't want to get into breeding them seriously as such, just thought it would be fun. It's a bit like breeding mice and rats. They breed so quickly and flood the market. The tanks I've seen in the pet shops are usually full and fluttering with them.

They are quite spectacular with those colourful tails.

Yakut