# Guppys



## M.l.lloyd (Jun 28, 2010)

Picked up a dozen guppys today i was told they are just guppys no fancy guppys..just guppys.

do they require lighting? i know its prly encouraged but do they NEED lighting? and what temperature do they thrive at? I could use a heater but i dont have a spare thermometer my heater is made for a 20 gal and they are in a 10 gal so i could put it at a low setting and it would make a few degrees change

so yea anyway..require lighting..and temp for guppys?


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## Ciddian (Mar 15, 2006)

Naw guppies don't demand lighting, I've seen guppy rooms that just get their light from the main light in the room.  If you have plants you might want to provide some sort of light but other than that, no..

Some people, including me when I had guppy only tanks keep their set ups on the cool side. But I think around 76-80 should be good for a guppy tank. Stable temps are important as well.

I am not really sure on the hardware thou, hopefully someone can help with that.


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## M.l.lloyd (Jun 28, 2010)

Thanks! i was thinking about picking up one of those lights you can click on and off from dollerama or something and putting it above the tank for some sort of light on a certain spot..just was brainstorming..of course this was before i made this thread.

One guppy accidently couldnt handle the power of my filter so he got sucked up into it =/..i turned down the power..sure dont want another accident on my hands

but they are great little guys..they have neat colours..and i love how you can tell if a female is pregnent its a great feature to have thumbs up for guppys! haha


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## Joeee (Apr 3, 2010)

M.l.lloyd said:


> Thanks! i was thinking about picking up one of those lights you can click on and off from dollerama or something and putting it above the tank for some sort of light on a certain spot..just was brainstorming..of course this was before i made this thread.
> 
> One guppy accidently couldnt handle the power of my filter so he got sucked up into it =/..i turned down the power..sure dont want another accident on my hands
> 
> but they are great little guys..they have neat colours..and i love how you can tell if a female is pregnent its a great feature to have thumbs up for guppys! haha


Buy a pack of those aquaclear sponges, cut a hole in it and put it on your filter, this prevents the sucking. 
When you have both genders of guppies in your tank, you should have a male:female ratio of 1:3. So if you have 2 males, you should have 6 females, this prevents death from stress from the spiky (XD) males. Unless you have an all-male or all-female tank.


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## Ciddian (Mar 15, 2006)

Yea I second the sponge.. I do that for my DP tank which has shrimps in it.  Saves any fry.


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## M.l.lloyd (Jun 28, 2010)

Now i wish the pet store employee would of told me that sponge trick =/

thats what i call usefull information..every guppy owner should know that -.-

thanks !

as i can see..its hard to tell i have 8 females and 5 males

EDIT: How often should i feed them? haha..i know i should feed the fry more often then the matures..but for the matures?


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## Ciddian (Mar 15, 2006)

Do you know how to sex them or did they tell you what you had? Its pretty easy to tell once someone shows you  Sometimes hard if they don't stop moving and guppies usually dont.. lol


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## M.l.lloyd (Jun 28, 2010)

Well the employee pointed out what a female looks like..and i did a quick google search and found out alot about the abdomen and the black spot so i think im informed good!


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## Joeee (Apr 3, 2010)

A few things:
- There's no such thing as a fancy guppy, they just put that in front of the word guppy to try and make a product sell.
- The black spot is often called the "gravid spot" and usually tells us that the fish is pregnant.
- I used to feed mine twice a day, you can feed them 3 times if they're younger. Not feeding them right after you get them for about 6-12 hours SOMETIMES helps them so they are focused on finding food so they explore.
- The male:female ratio is off, you might want to consider rehoming 2 of the males. You should try and get us a picture because we might be able to help you determine their gender.
- The sponge trick also gives you more biological filtration.
- If you decide to breed anything else, the sponge-method is a MUST if you're using a hang-on back fitler.
- Surprisingly, a lot of people don't know that guppies are livebearers, which means they give birth to minature versions of themselves who can swim around and find their own food.
- The thing about lighting is that light which contains all wavelengths (UVA or UVB [I don't recall which one has the shorter wavelength] to infrared) causes any fish to act as they would in a natural environment. The problem with trying to reproduce this is on an aquarium is that we simply can't and it encourages algae growth. So no lighting is fine, but I noticed that in my shrimp, lighting can improve their colours.

The best resource I can give you is:
http://www.guppies.com/

Sorry about the "point-form notes", I'm feeling way too lazy to actually type things out properly.


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## BillD (Jun 5, 2006)

Have to disagree about the "fancy" guppy" not existing. you would be hard pressed to find a natural guppy anywhere but in a feeder tank. The guppies that are sold are so far removed from a wild guppy that it can be difficult to believe they are the same fish.
I have always kept my guppies in unheated tanks, which can range from 66 to 75F. there are numerous advantages to keeping them at lower temps. They live longer, get fewer diseases and there is more oxygen in cooler water. bacteria growth is slower as well. The only draw back is that they grow a little slower.


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## Joeee (Apr 3, 2010)

BillD said:


> Have to disagree about the "fancy" guppy" not existing. you would be hard pressed to find a natural guppy anywhere but in a feeder tank. The guppies that are sold are so far removed from a wild guppy that it can be difficult to believe they are the same fish.
> I have always kept my guppies in unheated tanks, which can range from 66 to 75F. there are numerous advantages to keeping them at lower temps. They live longer, get fewer diseases and there is more oxygen in cooler water. bacteria growth is slower as well. The only draw back is that they grow a little slower.


Wild guppies:
http://www.petfish.net/pics/endzone.jpg
http://labs.eeb.utoronto.ca/rodd/

Endler's Guppy:
http://www.howtokeeptropicalfish.co.uk/InternetEndler.jpg

Some other guppies:
http://dm.hccfl.edu/cgs2822/07fa63686/jgammons/FinalProject/images/Freshwaterfish/fancy_guppy.jpg
http://www.breeding-guppies.com/images/guppy8.jpg

Let me try distinguish some qualities in guppies. I'll organize things into primary qualities and secondary qualities. Primary qualities are objective qualities such as "Poecilia reticulata can breed with anything else that is in the Poecilia genus assuming both are not sterile and of age to breed". Secondary qualities are subjective like "Guppies are pretty". Science deals with primary qualities, so we know that if a "fancy guppy" exists it would have to deal with a secondary quality.

Male guppies are not very often called "Fancy Guppies" because we're allowed to be more specific with them. For example we can call them red flamingo guppy or green cobra guppy.

Now look at this, a bee shrimp:
http://www.bobstropicalplants.com/store/catalog/images/Bee Shrimp.JPG

and this is a selectively bred bee shrimp:
http://www.shrimpnow.com/wm/wm.php?public_html/mygallery/files/6/0/3/8/img_1882ps.jpg

According to the logic proposed, the selectively bred bee shrimp can be regarded as a "fancy" bee shrimp because it is different from what is from in nature.

Btw, I've heard of people having guppies live up to three years at lower temperatures because it slows down their metabolism, is that true?


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## BettaBeats (Jan 14, 2010)

too many males to to little females will result in stress to all the fish. its possible the males will tire the females and she will die.

and yes, their fins do like to get sucked into filters
  
but they are very nice in a tank with their big, colourful fin.

and I agree/disagree with 'fancy' pets. Fancy can be thought of as breeded to have certain characteristics. However, some pet stores do just add 'fancy' to the name. For instance, a real fancy RAT might be an agouti berkshire. (brown coat with white belly). A 'regular' hooded black/white rat isn't really fancy as it is more common. 
The same applies to guppies and any other fancy pet.

Basically a bunch of cool genetics that are bred to maintain the appearance.


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## AquaNeko (Jul 26, 2009)

M.l.lloyd said:


> Now i wish the pet store employee would of told me that sponge trick =/
> 
> thats what i call usefull information..every guppy owner should know that -.-
> 
> ...


The sponge over the filter intake is not just a save fry/shrimp thing. It is also good as a prefilter or for extra biofiltration as that sponge will give your more surface area for the good bacteria.

Practically speaking that is. Some people may nto like it because of hte look but Im more function over form with the tanks.


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## Chris S (Dec 19, 2007)

In regards to guppies, I was always under the understanding that a fancy guppy was basically just what we would call a line-bred fish. It is general terminology. While guppy breeders will likely go quite a bit more in depth in regards to naming their strains, I think it is still generally accepted that most guppies you buy are fancy guppies, excluding most feeders.

On the subject of the original poster:

I keep my guppies in an unheated tank and they breed like clockwork. It works out well, because I breed them to help prepare my real breeding fish for spawning (or after spawning!). Live food rocks, plus I get to know what my feeders are eating =) The one downside to an unheated tank is that, at least I believe, temperature plays a role in sex determination of the fry.

I have a light on the tank because it is filled with x-mas moss. I don't actively remove gravid females, so the moss helps more fry survive their initial days. Ambient lighting should be more than sufficient however.


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## Joeee (Apr 3, 2010)

We're getting offtopic, if we are to discuss what a "fancy" guppy is, then one of us should make a new thread because an interesting discussion could be had.



Chris S said:


> On the subject of the original poster:
> 
> I keep my guppies in an unheated tank and they breed like clockwork. It works out well, because I breed them to help prepare my real breeding fish for spawning (or after spawning!). Live food rocks, plus I get to know what my feeders are eating =) The one downside to an unheated tank is that, at least I believe, temperature plays a role in sex determination of the fry.
> 
> I have a light on the tank because it is filled with x-mas moss. I don't actively remove gravid females, so the moss helps more fry survive their initial days. Ambient lighting should be more than sufficient however.


A few things I want to say:
The correlation between sex and temperature is definitely interesting. I do not know if it applies to fish and I haven't run any tests myself, but I do know that the magic number for turtles is 29 (or was it 28?). If eggs are incubated above that, they turn out female most of the time, if they are incubated under that then they usually turn out male. This seems especially useful for map turtles, male map turtles have a maximum size of about 5 inches while I've seen females up to 14 inches, a general average is 11-13 inches. A lot of theories as to how the dinosaurs became extinct deal with the correlation between sex and temperature.

Having moss in there and letting them either be eaten or letting survive is, in my idea a great concept. It introduces natural selection to your tank, ensuring that the strongest fry have the highest chance of survival. The only problem with this is that the gene pool in an aquarist's established guppy tank is limited, everyone is everybody else's sibling. It has genetic implications, but only allowing the strongest fry to survive and therefore breed which slows down the effect of the limited gene pool. However, the genetic implications are that the community cannot go through the "loyal" and "philandering" cycle or the "coy" and "philandering" cycle.


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## Chris S (Dec 19, 2007)

Well, actually, the survivors typically get siphoned out and into an apisto tank.

If they survive that, I usually put them in a community tank for retirement. That said, so far only one has eluded the wrath of my apistos =)


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## M.l.lloyd (Jun 28, 2010)

By the way my female had babys today =) only 2


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