Will guppy Fry Survive In The Main Tank?
It is stressful when getting baby guppy fries in your community tank. Growing your guppy fries in the main tank can be doubtful, and many fish keepers face this problem. So we need to learn many things about to deal with baby guppies.
Will guppy Fry Survive In The Main Tank? Guppy fry occasionally survives in the main tank. To increase the survival rate, you can add more hidden places in the fish tank. Placing a few spawning breeding mops is the newest concept that can help to hide guppy fry.
You can add a few floating live plants into the fish tank to increase the hiding spaces.
But the best method is to keep them in the nursery tank for at least one and a half months age. After that age, they will become fingerling stage and large enough not to fit in the adult fish’s mouths.
Table of Contents
- Is it safe to keep guppy fries in the main tank?
- What are the main challenges to keeping guppy fry in the main tank?
- When Can Guppy Fry Go With Adult Guppies?
- How to keep guppy fry in the main tank?
- Conclusion
Is it safe to keep guppy fries in the main tank?
No. Most fish keepers say you do not need to buy a breeding tank to keep them. And they say you can keep them in the main tank with their parents. But if you visit fish farms, you will notice that farmers are not keeping parent guppy fish in the main tanks.
Fish breeders catch their guppy fry daily and place them into the nursery tank. The main reason is the increasing survival rate.
Maintaining the breeding tank is not easy, and many things are costly. It would be best to buy heaters, air pumpers, filters, lights, and floating plants.
That is why home fish keepers say to keep your guppy fries in the main tank instead of maintaining the nursery fish tank.
Read More About :- How Long Does Guppy Fry Take To Grow And Reach Full Size?
What are the main challenges to keeping guppy fry in the main tank?
- Mature fish attack and eat
- Challenging to direct feed your guppy fry
- Guppy fries are weakening and sensitive
Mature fish attack and eat
This is the primary problem guppy fish fry will face if you keep them in the main tank.
Adult guppies and other fishes in the community tank do not hesitate to attack and eat your guppy fry. Baby guppies are easy targets for the other freshwater fishes who live in the same community tank.
Only a few fish breeds do not attack and do not eat guppy fries. Algae eaters do not harm baby guppies.
According to nature, adult fish eat any live feed that fits in their mouth. Baby guppies swim slowly and lie in the tank’s bottom so adult fish can quickly chase them and bite.
Fish cannot stop this bad habit because most freshwater fishes are omnivores.
Challenging to direct feed your guppy fry
If baby guppies are lucky enough to save from predators, they still find food difficult. Because most of the time, they live as hidden fish.
Finding them in the tank is also hard, and feeding them directly with proper feeds is challenging.
Guppy fry needs higher rich protein fish food to speed up their growth. They slowly become ill and weaker if you fail to provide good nutrition. And also, they will not get a rich color pattern like their parent fish.
When you feed live feeds into the main tank, it will mostly eat by adult fish because they can eat fast than fish fry.
So baby fries have to put a lot of effort into finding their food in the main tank.
Guppy fries are weakening and sensitive
As we all know, newborn baby guppies are much weak, and their body is too sensitive. They need well control temperature and water pH level.
There are mainly living adult fish in the main tank, and they can live with up or lower pH levels for some period. As well as ammonia level is also a bit higher in the main tank than in the nursery tank.
But this is not good for guppy fry because ammonia can burn their body, leading to reduced body patterns and colors.
Living community tank is more challenging for the guppy fry because a higher-speed filter system makes strong water waves. It makes it hard to swim baby fish, and predators easily target them under this condition.
If you observe, you will see guppy fry face a lot of nuisance in the main tank. Keep in mind parent guppies will not take care of their fries from anything.
tiny fish tank
When Can Guppy Fry Go With Adult Guppies?
You can place your guppy fries once they pass one and a half months because, in this period, your baby guppies grow well and swim fast in the fish tank.
So they properly ride the filtering system wave in the fish tank.
During this period, they gained good guts, and now they can eat any type of fish food, like frozen pallets. So it is easy to feed both fries and adult fish in the same tank.
One-and-a-half-month-old baby guppy’s life threat is less than a newborn guppy. So they can live peacefully in the community tank without any problems.
No one tries to eat them because they are now big enough not to fit adult fish’s mouths.
Read More About :- When Do Guppy Fry Get Their Color?
How to keep guppy fry in the main tank?
- Add more hidden places and floating plants
- Place a breeding box
- Set the correct water parameters
- Feed high-protein fish food
Tiny fish tank
Add more hidden places and floating plants
If you cannot arrange a breeding fish tank, you must keep them in the main tank. In that time you can do several things. One best method are adding more hiding places in the fish tank. This method can use some small pots, wood parts, and stones.
As well as adding floating plants is ideal when you have guppy fries. You can place many floating plants in the tank, which will also help reduce ammonia levels because floating plants absorb fish tank ammonia and other fish waste.
Place a breeding box
Another method is placing the breeding box into the main tank. It will help to cover your guppy fry once they are born.
Female guppy fry can’t reach them, and female guppy have no chance to eat her fry.
This is a good tool currently in the market. But the problem is it has lower space to live baby fries.
If baby guppies lack space to swim, they become less active in the tank.
Set the correct water parameters
- Temperature: 24°-26.7°C
- Ammonia : 0 ppm
- pH: 7.5-8.5
Newborn baby guppies expect stable water parameters. So you should always test water conditions using water test kits; you can buy quality water test kits at low prices on eBay or Amazon websites.
Do not increase or decrease temperature suddenly at any time because it will lead to stress and aggression in adult fish. Guppy fries also can’t live suddenly change water conditions levels so that they will become sick or die.
Each week, refill 30 % of the water in the fish tank and check water parameters daily.
Feed high-protein fish food
If you plan to keep your fries with their adult fish, you must provide higher protein food for your guppy fries.
You can feed brine shrimp, vinegar eel, and micro worms as a live feed. These live feeds are rich in nutrition and help increase baby guppy’s growth speed.
As you know, the community tank has a lot of fish breeds, so you have to feed 3 or 4 times daily into the community tank.
Don’t miss the feeding time because adult fish tend to eat guppy fry when you miss feeding times.
Read More About : – What Fish Will Eat Guppy Fry?
Conclusion
Guppy fry cannot live properly in the main tank with adult fish. Removing them from the main tank and keeping them in the breeding tank is better.
If you do not have to buy a nursery tank, you can keep guppy fries in the main tank, but you need to take a few critical actions. Otherwise, adults will eat baby guppies.
After one and a half months, you can put guppy fries with their adult fish without much problem.
Related Articles :-
https://www.tinyfishtank.com/how-to-breed-guppy-in-mud-ponds/
https://www.tinyfishtank.com/how-deep-should-the-water-be-for-guppy-fry/
https://www.tinyfishtank.com/why-guppy-fry-at-the-bottom-of-the-tank/
https://www.tinyfishtank.com/why-are-my-guppy-fry-dying/
