Guppy fish breed easily and quickly. To raise healthy baby guppies, proper guppy fry care depends mostly on the owner. This is because guppy fish do not take care of their young. Baby guppies are left to fend for themselves. Luckily, guppy fry is easy to care for so long as you know what to do. Here are some information and tips on how to care for your baby guppies.
Table of Contents
How Are Guppies Born?
Adult guppies mature at around 4-6 months. Guppies do not lay any eggs. That’s because guppies are livebearers. They give birth to live baby guppies known as fry. A female guppy is able to give birth to 20-60 fry at a time.
Guppies give birth once every 30 days up until the age of 2 to 2.5 years. Normally, guppy fry start swimming soon after birth. They seek out hiding spots to protect themselves as other tank mates, including adult guppies will eat the baby fry.
A few hours after birth, baby guppies begin searching for food. They usually look for scraps and remain cautious of about the other fish in the tank.
How To Care For Baby Guppies?
Baby guppies are often eaten by adult guppies and other fish in the aquarium. Thus, it’s always a good idea to have a separate breeding tank.
Use the breeding tank to transfer pregnant females so that they can give birth. This way you can increase the chances of your baby guppies’ survival
But, if you do not have a separate aquarium for breeding guppy fish, you can save your guppy fry using the following tips:
- Use a large glass or plastic container to separate the pregnant female guppy from the rest of the tank mates when she is close to giving birth.
- You can also use a breeding box to separate the female from the main fish population.
- A breeding box is a small mesh or plastic box that you insert into the fish tank. It is designed in a way that the water from the tank flows through but the fry can swim out of the box.
- After the female gives birth, remove her from the breeding box or container and leave only the baby fry.
- If you do keep your baby guppies in the main tank, live plants such as guppy grass, hornworts, java moss, or the roots of water lettuce can increase their survival rate.
- These plants provide hiding places until they are big and strong enough to protect themselves.
How To Feed Baby Guppies?
Baby guppies are around 6mm in length at birth. The fry have very small mouths but they have a huge appetite. Typically, baby guppies can eat every 30 minutes. To make your baby guppies grow faster, you can feed them about 5-10 times.
The fry can eat the same food as adult guppies. But, you have to grind the food into smaller bits for the babies. Foods like baby brine shrimp, micro worms, and vinegar eels are good starter food baby guppies.
Flake foods or powdered foods high in protein are recommended for feeding guppy fry. You can find a few different choices on Amazon. Baby brine shrimp is an excellent choice for guppy fry.
How To Maintain A Guppy Fry Tank?
When keeping baby guppies in a separate tank, you can tweak a few things to ensure that the baby fry thrives. For example,
- Use a water heater to keep the temperature at 80° F. Warm water increases the metabolism of fish and stimulates growth.
- Fresh water also promotes growth. Thus, partial water changes where the majority of water is fresh water benefits the growth of guppy fry. 50% water changes twice a week is sufficient.
- 12-16 hours of light a day is needed to help prevent deformities. It is not necessary to keep the baby fry in light all day and night. Guppies do sleep so be sure to turn the lights out at night.
Conclusion
During the first months of your baby guppies lives, good water conditions and high quality and varied food can promote healthy growth a beautiful colors (depending on the guppy types)
External resources:
- Raising Newborn Guppy Fry: Care & Feeding (Video) – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHr3tDVOg7I
- How to Care for Baby Guppies (with Pictures) – https://www.wikihow.com/Care-for-Baby-Guppies
- How to Save Your Baby Guppies in a Community Tank – https://pets.thenest.com/save-baby-guppies-community-tank-3621.html
Frequently Asked Questions
Care
Feed your baby guppies every 2-3 hours for the first 6 weeks.u003cbr/u003eGive your baby guppies ground up dry food for baby live bearing fish.u003cbr/u003eAdd dried blood worms to the food for added nutrients.u003cbr/u003eGive your baby guppies freshly hatched brine shrimp as a supplement.
Growth
Young u003cstrongu003eguppy fryu003c/strongu003e, about 1-month old, tend to grow slowly when in a large aquarium. High water volumes prevent them from finding food and u003cstrongu003efry u003c/strongu003euse up too much energy searching for food. In a smaller tank, the energy will instead promote u003cstrongu003egrowth u003c/strongu003eas they do not need to swim around much to find food.
Average Amount
Female guppies can take a few hours to drop all her fry. One drop can be between two to 200 u003cstrongu003efryu003c/strongu003e. But, the u003cstrongu003eaverageu003c/strongu003e for a female to give birth is between 30 to 60 u003cstrongu003ebaby guppies.u003c/strongu003e
Size
u003cstrongu003eGuppy babiesu003c/strongu003e are fully developed at birth. The average u003cstrongu003esizeu003c/strongu003e of a baby guppy is about 0.25 inches. Keep u003cstrongu003ebabiesu003c/strongu003e in a tank by themselves until they grow to an inch or more. When they are u003cstrongu003ebabiesu003c/strongu003e, other fish in the tank will eat them if they catch them.
References
- The Growth of a Guppy – Pets – https://pets.thenest.com/growth-guppy-4119.html
- Gestation Period for Guppies | LoveToKnow –https://small-pets.lovetoknow.com/gestation-period-guppies