What is the guppy fry survival rate?
Guppy fries are not born from the egg-hatching process, so when they are born, they start to swim upside or downside and then try to hide somewhere else. This is the natural process, and if you monitor this process, you will see guppy fry put a lot of effort into surviving in the fish tank.
Here is a quick answer
What is the guppy fry survival rate? Generally, female guppies give birth near 100-150 guppy fries per batch, and up to 20% – 25% of fries can survive it. This survival rate depends on many factors like water conditions, feeding routine, predators, and temperature.
However, you can quickly increase this survival rate to 75% -80% when you control a few things. We will describe those things in the below section one by one.
If your fish tank has few breeds of other freshwater fish, remember they can easily attack the fries and swallow them whole.
So always focus fries predators in the fish tank, and keep away your baby guppies from them. Otherwise, they will eat all your baby guppies within one week or less than that time.
This is not a problem if you plan to reduce the guppy population in the fish tank. If you have overcrowding in your fish tank, you can stay away from protecting guppy’s fry.
Adult guppy fish and other freshwater fish breeds will eat your guppy fries, and this is another method to provide live feeds to your adult fish in the community tank.
Some fish keepers buy nursery tanks, but some fish keepers do not. So when they get 100 baby fries weekly, they have no choice, and the fish keeper lets them live in the community tank.
The primary purpose is to reduce baby guppies as much as possible, and adult fish starts to attack and chase the baby guppies. This is the way how nature solves overcrowded fish tanks.
Do not forget that guppies are omnivore fish breeds and eat any live feed that fits their mouth.
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Table of Contents
How Do You Help Guppy Fry Survive?
You can do a few things to increase the Guppy fry survival rate in the fish tanks. If you follow these steps correctly, you can get a higher survival rate for guppy fries because when baby guppies are born, they are at high risk with living female fish.
- Place the Female Guppy in the breeding tank
- Provide higher protein feed
- Schedule the water changes
- Set the suitable temperature parameters
- Set the right filtering system
- Add a few live fish plants
Place the Female Guppy in the breeding tank
When your female guppy is ready to give birth, move her into a separate fish tank. Breeding boxes make the process easier, but female fish may become stressed and fearful.
A separate breeding tank is the best option for female fish.
Before you place a female Guppy into the fish tank, check for signs of pregnancy. If you check properly, you will notice her belly darken and her gravid spot.
Female guppies are not hesitant to give birth in a community tank, but other freshwater fish will eat guppy fries. So baby guppies have less chance to survive in the main tank.
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Provide higher protein feed
Guppy fries need higher protein feed when their early stage of life. Until guppy fries can survive pallets and flakes, live foods are their best feed option.
Nutrition food can play a leading role in the survival rate of guppy fry. Live food is the richest protein feed, and other commercial pallets also have a good protein level.
Guppy fries have voracious food appetites. You can provide Brine shrimp, Moina, tubifex worm, and red worm as their live feeds.
Keep in mind; guppy fries need their feed several times daily because they can eat four or five meals daily.
Overfeeding is not a problem when you feed them the proper quantity at a time. Always use a spoon; then, you can measure the amount of feed.
You should not provide the same meal plan each day. Change their diet daily because the same meal cannot eat fish fries, and they will reject them. So use a variety of meals, and its increases their appetite.
Schedule the water changes
If you provide more than two meals daily, then you should follow a water change schedule plan. Because when fries eat a lot, they poop a lot in the tank. It directly increases the ammonia level and nitrate levels.
An increase in ammonia level is not suitable for guppy fries because fish can face oxygen problems when ammonia increases in the tank. Not only that, they become stressed and quickly get an illness.
So sometimes, overfeeding can threaten them because it changes the chemical balance of water. Sometimes they lose their appetite, and then guppy fry does not eat all the food you have added to the fish tank.
Due to this reason, some food will sink into the bottom of the tank. Those leftovers sink food will not eat guppy fries, which increases the ammonia level in the tank.
So, you should perform a 20% water change twice a week in your fish tank.
You can buy a water test kit to check hardness and pH levels. Keep checking fish tank water conditions daily, which will help your fish live healthily.
When you refill the guppy tank, remember to use stock water or aged water, do not directly refill tap water because tap water contains chlorine which is harmful to guppy fries.
tiny fish tank
Set the suitable temperature parameters
If you plan to keep a fish tank without a heater, keeping your fish fry alive will be a little challenging. Baby guppies always need stable temperatures in the fish tank. Otherwise, they get stressed quickly and face many illnesses, such as white spot disease.
Guppy fry needs warm water and no need for the temperature to exceed 80 degrees. When you set the right temperature in the fish tank, fries are active and eat their feed more. It helps to grow them quickly.
The most important thing is to set the proper temperature parameters. The ideal temperature range is 75°-80°F.
When setting up the branded heater, you do not need to worry about temperature.
But if you buy a low-quality product, you will face many problems because a low-quality heater can frequently change the water temperature and directly affects the fries. When you switch to warm up or down often, baby guppies get stressed quickly.
This can lead to death, so be careful when buying a heater and always use branded items for the fish tank.
Set the right filtering system
Setting the correct filter system is essential when you have baby guppies in your fish tank because baby guppies need to provide a few meals daily, and they eat a lot.
Later a lot of fish waste collects in the fish tank, which should absorb quickly; otherwise, water will get dirt soon.
In this situation, if you do not set the filter system in the fish tank, your tank ammonia level will rise quickly.
That is why you need to set up the filter system in the fish tank. Water changes can reduce ammonia levels but will not help to remove the fish waste in the tank.
Fish waste and leftover food sink into the tank, so water change will not remove it. In this case, we need to set up the right filter system in the fish tank to absorb all the fish waste.
Many fish keepers hesitate to install filter systems because they fear their fry will absorb the filter. But don’t worry. Sponge filters are the best option for this case.
Don’t run your guppy fry fish tank without a filter system. The filter can absorb a lot of unnecessary things that can harm the guppies.
Always set the filter system in the corner and reduce the speed because high speed makes water currents, which can disturb swimming baby guppies.
Read More About :- Why Guppy Fry At The Bottom Of The Tank? Reasons & Solutions
Add a few live fish plants
Adding live plants to the tank is ideal, especially when you have baby guppies. You can also add artificial plants. But we do not recommend it, and if we can add live fish plants, then it will be good for fries because they can eat live plants when they want.
Adding a live plant in the tank will generate extra oxygen, which helps guppy fish. Live fish plants provide an additional hiding place for the guppy fry, which will help them when they live in a community tank.
You can add more floating live fish plants into the fish tank. That will be good when the fries live with the parent fish.
Conclusion
No one can keep all fries alive when they are born in the fish tank. Few fries will die, and the rest will remain in the tank.
It would be best if you took care of the remaining fries from predators, especially fries in the community tank.
It can increase the survival rate of guppy fry by providing high-protein fish food and a few other things.
Set up the filter system in the fish tank and adjust the heater with suitable parameters; those will increase their survival rate and help them grow healthy.
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