|
|
Post by siobhan on May 11, 2016 18:03:43 GMT -5
We have a whole bunch of new baby guppies in the tank as of a couple of days ago. Their parents are my last batch of babies, who've been around since, I believe, October and just got around to presenting me with grand-guppies. Or perhaps these are great-grand-guppies.  At any rate, in spite of my brother, who used to raise guppies when I was a tot, and who told me guppies breed with great enthusiasm, these took their sweet time growing up and getting around to it, and I finally went and bought a couple of new females to provide some genetic diversity. A couple of days after introducing the ladies to the tank, there were all these babies. Unless the ladies were pregnant when I put them in, these babies belong to the original babies. I just love watching these tiny, tiny babies eat because no matter how I crunch up the flakes, they're still huge, and these babies will grab a flake and run with it and go hide somewhere to eat it. It's hilarious to watch. Clyde puts up with this, begrudgingly, and will sit on my hand and watch with me as long as I continue carrying on a conversation with him while we do so. |
|
|
|
Post by biteybird on May 12, 2016 3:20:08 GMT -5
Congratulations on being a grand/great-grand guppy parent. I'm sure they will thrive in your care. You may find they will thrive TOO much...it puts me mind of when I was given some zebra finches by a neighbour - their numbers swelled from 20 to 70 within 5 months!  |
|
|
|
Post by siobhan on May 12, 2016 14:20:56 GMT -5
LOL. The parents are the progeny of the previous guppies, who died off one by one and left only the babies behind. I was also told that the ramshorn snails would proliferate us out of house and home and instead, they self-regulate. There ARE a lot of them, but they don't overpopulate and "take over" as my friend who gave them to me said they would. I would assume the guppies will do the same, as they did before. I don't expect all the babies to live to grow up. If three or four of them do, that would probably be a good record. The adults are part of two previous batches of babies, and one of them is the only survivor of his batch. It's nature's way of preventing overpopulation, I guess.
|
|
|
|
Post by biteybird on May 13, 2016 5:15:09 GMT -5
I've never owned fish, but have always liked looking at guppies and if I weren't so busy would think about getting a fish tank...maybe one day!
|
|
|
|
Post by siobhan on May 13, 2016 11:14:17 GMT -5
The babies have grown a little and gotten very brave in the last couple of days and now that they're dashing around all over the tank, I can see them better and I believe they're not the babies of the original babies, but of one or both of the new girls. Most of the new babies are gold, like the two new girls, instead of silver and black, like the others. I suspected at least one of the new girls was pregnant when I brought them home. So I bought two guppies and got 20 free. LOL However, a few of the babies are silver with black tails so maybe one of them had babies, too, which would explain the number. They eat like HORSES.
Guppies are really pretty easy. I have a 10-gallon tank with a filter and heater and I do a 25 to 50 percent water change every week or two weeks, change the filter as needed, and feed twice a day. I've been working so much the last couple of weeks that they haven't gotten a water change. I just changed the filter and added some water last Sunday. Now that there are all those tiny babies in there, I'm kind of afraid to use the siphon for fear of hurting or killing babies in the process, so I'll just have to keep the filter really clean until they're bigger and hope most of the gunk goes through it. I have a bunch of snails and an algae eater fish in there with them, and they do a good job of keeping it clean, too.
|
|
|
|
Post by biteybird on May 13, 2016 17:53:39 GMT -5
You've definitely got some freebies! They don't sound that hard to look after, from what you've said. I agree, you couldn't use a siphon yet, I'm guessing they'd get sucked up right away. :0 I'd be interested to see a photo of the different colours when they get big enough, if you're able. I wonder how many colours they 'come in' at the shops. |
|
|
|
Post by siobhan on May 14, 2016 11:14:39 GMT -5
Tons. I always just tell the clerk to pick some at random, though.
|
|
|
|
Post by siobhan on May 17, 2016 12:11:26 GMT -5
The babies are doing amazingly well. Growing like weeds. Eating like horses. Chasing each other around and playing. Too tiny still for me to dare do a cleaning or try to move some of them to another tank, but in a few weeks I think I'll have to set up another tank and move some or this tank will be too crowded. Or perhaps I need a bigger tank. LOL
|
|
|
|
Post by aaron on May 25, 2016 17:59:14 GMT -5
I love watching baby fish grow up. They are super cute. We had a breeding situation once that produced an out of control number of guppies, but were luckily able to give them all to someone with a much larger fish tank. I often wonder whether that situation got completely out of control after he took them. Wasn't my acquaintance, however, so I have no idea We just went through a huge ordeal with our fish tanks this past weekend. We consolidated our 20 gallon and our 29 gallon into a single 36 gallon with a bowfront, giving our massive cichlid more room to swim and lots of places to hide for our albino bristlenose pleco. Those are the only two fish I have left at this point, as the rest have slowly died and I have decided that I am not purchasing any more fish. This one cichlid is a ton of work and frankly I think when he is gone, I will be done with taking care of fish. But the change has been a huge improvement. He seems much happier. |
|
|
|
Post by siobhan on May 26, 2016 14:21:46 GMT -5
I am thinking about getting a 20-gallon tank and moving the guppies to it once these babies are big enough to catch without hurting them. With the last batch of babies, there were a lot of babies but only a few lived to adulthood and then their parents died off one by one, so it wasn't an issue. There are a lot more babies this time, and as far as I can tell, nearly all of them are still alive and thriving. I could never get an accurate count because there are so many and they're so tiny and zip around so fast, so maybe all of them are still alive and thriving. All the adults are still thriving, too. And one of the male adults is trying very hard to make more babies with one of the females, who so far as I can tell, is rejecting his advances quite decidedly. For now, the babies are still little enough that it isn't overcrowded, but it will be if they all survive. And by then there might be a whole NEW batch of babies!
|
|
|
|
Post by aaron on May 26, 2016 16:52:48 GMT -5
Yeah, this sounds a bit like the beginning of our situation!  A 20 gallon is pretty manageable. I was doing 50% water changes on our 20 gallon every week and it wasn't too bad. Hoping to have to do a lot less with this one. |
|
|
|
Post by aaron on May 27, 2016 12:38:34 GMT -5
Here's what our new tank looks like, with our big friend, whose name is Goob.  |
|
|
|
Post by siobhan on May 27, 2016 13:16:21 GMT -5
Good grief, he's a monster! LOL What a big boy. Do you feed him small children?
The friend who gave me my first four ramshorn snails warned me that they would get out of control and they haven't, and I assure you I don't do anything to control their numbers. They do it themselves, and when they reach a certain number that they know but I don't, they stop having babies until some of the bigger ones die off. I am hoping the guppies will be the same way.
|
|
|
|
Post by aaron on May 27, 2016 13:48:20 GMT -5
Haha.. yeah, he's huge. Over 11" long, and when we bought him, he was little more than an inch. He's just grown, and grown... and grown. But he appears to have stopped at this point. I can't remember exactly when we got him, but I think it's been nearly 3 years now. Hopefully he has reached full size, and doesn't decide to keep growing now that he has more space. He's a really cool fish though, definitely smarter than your average fish tank companion. He is always very interested in what everyone is doing near his tank (because he wants food... we like to joke that at all times, it seems he has never eaten before) and he is always working on gravel-relocating projects. He will pick up a mouthful of gravel and rocks and deposit it elsewhere... He likes to dig all the way to the glass at the bottom. I hope your guppy situation works out... ours definitely didn't seem to be self-regulating, but I guess I didn't give it much time to get to the point of saturation, just saw a problem and solved it before it got out of hand, which it seemed to be doing Here's another photo of our large friend:  |
|
|
|
Post by siobhan on May 27, 2016 14:58:26 GMT -5
He's really quite handsome, and apparently smiled for the camera, too.
|
|
At any rate, in spite of my brother, who used to raise guppies when I was a tot, and who told me guppies breed with great enthusiasm, these took their sweet time growing up and getting around to it, and I finally went and bought a couple of new females to provide some genetic diversity. A couple of days after introducing the ladies to the tank, there were all these babies. Unless the ladies were pregnant when I put them in, these babies belong to the original babies. I just love watching these tiny, tiny babies eat because no matter how I crunch up the flakes, they're still huge, and these babies will grab a flake and run with it and go hide somewhere to eat it. It's hilarious to watch. Clyde puts up with this, begrudgingly, and will sit on my hand and watch with me as long as I continue carrying on a conversation with him while we do so. 
