Guppies are by far the easiest fish to breed, if you are keeping a male and a female you are bound to get some baby guppies. Whether you have never kept a fish before or you have kept hundreds the guppy is the one you need to try. It is super easy to take care of, it looks really pretty, and they’re easy to breed. If you are interested in breeding guppies you have come to the right place in this article I will be explaining how to breed guppies and raise guppy fry.

Male and Female

The first step in this process will be getting the males and females to breed. I would recommend keeping 2-3 females for every male The males are usually relentless when breeding and you don’t want the females to be overwhelmed and stressed. It’s better to have more females than males so that the males will swap between the females and it will be less stressful for the individual. The way you can tell male and female guppies apart is by their anal fins. A male guppy will have a longer anal fin and a female will have a smaller triangle shape anal fin, as shown in the picture below After you have evened out the male-to-female ratio breeding should start very soon. after introducing male and female guppies together you usually have some guppy fry within 30-40 days.

Guppy Birth

Once the female is ready to give birth you might be able to tell because she will isolate herself from other fish maybe hide in a corner or a place where you aren’t able to see her. Guppies generally give birth to around 15-30 fry this varies from every birth. Once she has given birth you will have so many small guppy fry swimming around the tank. Just be careful as the other guppies in the tank including the mom want to have a taste of them.

Guppy Survival

Guppy fry is a source of food for a lot of fish including other guppies even the mother guppy. So if you want to raise as many guppy fry to full size as possible you going to need to make sure they don’t get eaten, there are a few ways to do this. The first way is to remove the adult guppies and anything that could potentially eat the fry out of the tank and into another tank. If you don’t have another tank you can move the adult guppies into, you can always just add hiding spots and plants that the guppies can hide in. The most popular plants for hiding fry are guppy grass, water sprite, and Java moss I would highly recommend either the guppy grass or java moss. As their very easy to take care of read more about easy plants to care for here. “Best aquarium plants for beginners“

Raising Healthy Guppy Fry

A very important piece of raising healthy guppy is diet. Diet is extremely important when I was raising my guppy fry I was struggling with not enough fiber in their food. A good way to combat this issue is to get freeze-dried foods. For the guppy fry diet, I would recommend baby brine shrimp, Hikari Fancy Guppy or if you want another idea freeze dried brine shrimp works very well too. You want to feed these guys at least 3 times a day whether you want to feed them 3 times a day with bigger portions or 12 times a day with very small portions either one works. Just keep in mind that their digestive system usually takes about 30 minutes to fully complete.

Guppy Fry environment

I already talked about guppy fry survival with plants and hiding spots but what about tank size? When keeping guppy fry it’s important to remember if they have too big of a tank they might get lost or have a hard time finding food and may die. So you want something with space for them to swim around and it’s not hard to find food. I’d recommend a 10-gallon for keeping guppy fry as the best option. However, you can also go with options like a 5 or 20-gallon as long as you make sure they have enough room to swim and it’s not hard to find food. Guppy fry produce a growing hormone that will stunt the growth of other guppy fry in the tank so it is important to do water changes frequently. I’d recommend 2-3 15% water changes a week. Guppy fry tank you want to be pretty clean because a clean tank is very beneficial for their growth.

If you have any questions about Guppy Breeding or Guppy Fry or other questions about fishkeeping let me know in the comments below.