The First Post... A Guppy Life

Hi everybody! (This post took me a couple of days to write lol... I think I started Dec 9 but finished today Dec 13 because of work and holiday stuff!) This blog is all about my adventures with my guppies =D While this is not my first experience with guppies, I do not claim to be an expert in anyway about guppies. All the knowledge I have is from observation and internet. This blog will mostly be for people like me, who are impatient waiting for their own guppy births or just can't get enough staring at them =)

First thing's first, if you're new to guppies, is figuring out who's male any who's female. The following diagrams are from guppies.com.

TIP: It's good to keep more females then males as the male will fight other males if there's not enough ladies to go around or he will tire out his one female chasing her all over the tank in his efforts to repopulate the planet single-handedly.

Now onto my guppies =D As I said before, this is not my first time raising guppies but it will be the first time I track how many fry they have, the length of their monthly cycle, and if I can breed a specific color pattern from them.

This first guppy's name is Lemon. I believe she is a common golden guppy. These pictures of her are what she looks like today at about 16 days from when she last gave birth. I bought her from Petsmart and she was already pregnant. The day after I bought her on Nov. 24, she gave birth to 11 healthy orange-ish fry. It may have been stress birth but they all came out healthy, no still-borns. They came out right after another. I did not put her in a breeder box. I had her in a small 5 gallon "breeding tank". There were two other pregnant guppies as various stages in there already. I just put a big fake plant in for the babies to hide and hoped that they weren't all eaten. I read that the breeder box would be too stressful and result in more still-borns.

Taken Dec 10 : 16 days after birth

Lemon's 11 Orange-ish fry on day 1.

A few hours after she gave birth, I transferred her to another tank that had a shoal of neon tetras and a male guppy whose traits I want to breed. His name is Casanova.... it's really hard to catch a picture of him that's not blurred! I read from another online source which I can't recall that if you want to have a specific male mate with her, it has to be done within a few hours of birthing, otherwise she will use one of her stored sperm.

Sadly, as of today, I think only 6 of the original Lemon 11 survived from being eaten. It's hard to tell exactly because they keep moving and they dart in and out of the fake plant.

On a happier note, yesterday, one of the other expecting guppies in the same tank. Her name is Spots. Yeah, I know, reeeaaaal creative names right?

Spots after giving birth

She had 6 pink-gray fry I think. Again, hard to tell since they keep moving around. Just like Lemon, I put her in the tank with Casanova a few hours after birthing. I removed the other expecting guppy back to my 30 gallon community tank because I have decided I misjudged her pregnant-ness and she won't be ready for awhile. Now the fry are in the tank by themselves with the exception of my harmless Oto algae eater.

Lemon's fry are slightly longer than the Spots's fry. I can't get a ruler on them to measure since they won't stop moving but I did order some magnifying rulers that I plan to stick to the side of the tank for measuring. I don't want to take them out of water just to measure them because they are so young and tiny.

I currently have another guppy in labor and she's huge! She's my biggest guppy. I got her from a small local pet store and I've never seen a guppy as big as her for sale!

Bertha on Dec 9

Bertha has looked like she was about to explode for a week now but still no fry so it must be soon. She was originally in a large community tank and I transferred her to my fry tank recently so nobody would bother her. She was in the breeder box because I wanted to see how many fry a guppy as big as her would give. Today (Dec 13) she is back in the box because I can clearly see fry eyes and faces through her belly so here's hoping its soon! Poor little lady has been in labor a long time...

 Keep checking back for more on Bertha's birthing and Lemon and Spot's growing fry!