Any tips for a hobbyist dabbling in guppy breeding?

[PennysFishkeeping]

Been into Fishkeeping for years, recently started dabbling in purposely breeding fish. Y'all have any tips that I haven't thought of yet?

 

https://youtube.com/shorts/Z-wAnDx2pqI?feature=share

[Fish Folk]

Exciting! I’m into breeding. I would call myself a very “enthusiastic amateur.”

With Guppies, you can either do a “mutt guppy” tank, or a dedicated grouping.

My son and I helped a 5th grade class a couple years back. Here’s a look at the mutt guppies we added after a summer of growing outdoors…

More recently, I’ve been focusing on several colony projects indoors…

”Precious Metals” 

“Sapphire Dragon”

[Ken Burke]

My advise Is “just say no.”  Guppies are a gateway fish.  If you start breeding them, soon you end up breeding like 10 other species.  next thing you know, the entire family is sleeping in the living room cause you converted the bedrooms into fish rooms, you are presorting you out going aquabid orders.  🤣😝🤪🤪🤪🥸

[Fish Folk]

^^ T R U T H ^^

[Scapexghost]

Ill Plug my guppy journal. Assuming you already know how to keep guppies alive, the hardest thing is keeping the fry from being eaten. Guppies arent nearly as bad as platies and swordtails, but they aren't parent-of-the-year material either. Floating plants help a lot, i use water lettuce. Coarse, natural colored gravel helps a lot as well. The newborns will actually wedge themselves between the grains to hide from predators. Feeding heavy helps a lot as well. No only to help the fry grow as fast as possible, but to discourage the parents from finding alternative food sources. If you are feeding heavy, a snail colony and/or a shrimp colony will help manage the excess food.

[TheSwissAquarist]

On 10/28/2022 at 11:14 PM, PennysFishkeeping said:

Been into Fishkeeping for years, recently started dabbling in purposely breeding fish. Y'all have any tips that I haven't thought of yet?

 

https://youtube.com/shorts/Z-wAnDx2pqI?feature=share

Keep it simple to start with, by getting a good male/female ratio, and then get a good strain going by continually bringing new guppies into the tank and selling offspring to make room for them.

Livebearers are like instant noodle: just add water😂.

Keep us posted on how you do!

[PineSong]

Welcome! I started raising guppies a bit more than a year ago, and something I learned the hard way is that some strains of guppies mature/develop color much faster than others so that you can tell which offspring are male and which are female at an earlier age.

If I had a do-over, I'd choose a strain of guppies where males and females are easy to distinguish. I started with ginga sulphureus guppies which are hard to tell apart because the females do not have a dark gravid spot and males and females have the same yellow base color for their bodies. A strain where females are tan/gray and males are blue, red, etc would make for easier sorting. It's very important to get your males out of the tank before they can breed--if you are trying to breed for traits like color intensity, tail shape, etc. If you are colony breeding and not trying to control which male is the father, you can ignore this whole 'lesson'!

The other thing I wish I had done differently is I wish I had larger tanks/tubs for raising fry. My guppy fry tanks are 10g and it takes forever for fry to grow. My swordtail tank is a 29 and those fry grow much faster. Whether it's the actual size of the tank or the impact of tank size + population size on water quality, I'm not sure. I've done water changes 2x a week (50%) with no noticeable impact. So, if you have room for larger grow-out tanks, you might be happier with them.

 

[The endler guy]

have you tried raising/ breeding them in brackish/ salt that is their natural habitat 

[JettsPapa]

On 10/28/2022 at 11:28 PM, Scapexghost said:

Ill Plug my guppy journal. Assuming you already know how to keep guppies alive, the hardest thing is keeping the fry from being eaten. Guppies arent nearly as bad as platies and swordtails, but they aren't parent-of-the-year material either. Floating plants help a lot, i use water lettuce. Coarse, natural colored gravel helps a lot as well. The newborns will actually wedge themselves between the grains to hide from predators. Feeding heavy helps a lot as well. No only to help the fry grow as fast as possible, but to discourage the parents from finding alternative food sources. If you are feeding heavy, a snail colony and/or a shrimp colony will help manage the excess food.

That depends on the strain.  I had albino koi guppies for a while.  When I bought them the store owner told me they were bad about eating fry, and he was right.  I saw exactly one fry, and only saw it once.

On the other hand, my dumbo mosaic guppies don't seem to bother fry at all.

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

@Guppysnail

[Guppysnail]

On 10/31/2022 at 9:54 AM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

@Guppysnail

I did not seriously breed. I outcrossed for genetic strength just so I could have dynamite healthy guppies. I started with them because my niece and some friends could not get healthy robust guppies. 
Best of luck with your venture. I’m looking forward to following along. 

[Beardedbillygoat1975]

I kept one strain which was @Bentley PascoeBlue Hawaiian guppy’s and they sold very well locally. 
I really loved breeding them as they bred true, they were prolific and didn’t eat their fry which is a question I’d ask the breeder. 
I was using a 50 g tub. Even in a container that size I reached a critical mass and ended up with a crash. I was able to breed them with blue dream shrimp making it the most valuable tank in my fishroom. 
Substrate I’d highly recommend using crushed coral for substrate its cheap, buffers beautifully,  and provides amazing surface area for BB. 
Sponge filters are cheap, work great and provide a good food source. 
I used pond planters with their holes in them as nurseries - the top I put some airline that was sealed to help it float in the container and put some guppy grass and moss inside. This led to tremendous yields. 

[Scapexghost]

On 10/31/2022 at 8:41 AM, JettsPapa said:

That depends on the strain.  I had albino koi guppies for a while.  When I bought them the store owner told me they were bad about eating fry, and he was right.  I saw exactly one fry, and only saw it once.

On the other hand, my dumbo mosaic guppies don't seem to bother fry at all.

Maybe it's due to their tails? Guppies with less extravigant tails are faster and can more easily predate their fries.

[JettsPapa]

On 10/31/2022 at 4:05 PM, Scapexghost said:

Maybe it's due to their tails? Guppies with less extravigant tails are faster and can more easily predate their fries.

Maybe so.  I've only been keeping guppies for a couple of years, so there's a lot I don't know (about many other subjects too, not just guppies).