# supplementing community tank diet with guppy fry



## jpalimpsest (Dec 18, 2012)

I'm playing around with the idea of carefully managed guppy breeding to supplement the diet of a community tank with guppy fry. I'd like some input on whether this could work.

The tank is a 38 gallon planted tank that I intend to stock with sparkling gouramis (aka pygmy gouramis), spotted blue-eye rainbowfish, scarlet badis, celestial pearl danios (aka galaxy rasboras), and cherry red shrimp. If I follow through with the plan above, I would also keep 3 female guppies in this tank.

The plan would involve setting up a 6.6 gallon lightly planted tank to house 3 male guppies. Every so often I would temporarily introduce one of the males to the 38 gallon with the females and remove him after the females are impregnated. Thus creating a controlled supply of guppy fry.

Would the planned 38 gallon occupants devour the guppy fry, or am I risking a guppy "epidemic?"


----------



## Michael (Jul 20, 2010)

This can work, but not quite in the way you describe.

Female guppies, like many other livebearers, store sperm from each mating in their reproductive tracts. This means that they can produce multiple broods from just one mating. In other words, once your females have been impregnated, they will remain pregnant indefinitely, periodically giving birth.

I don't have any first hand experience with your other fish, and don't know how keen they will be on a diet of guppy fry. It's possible you might have a surplus, but this is no big problem.

I do a version of this in one of my tanks. I breed Endler's livebearers, which are closely related to guppies but slightly smaller. And they have the advantage that they do not cannabalize their own young, making them even more productive. I can be overwhelmed with Endler's in no time! So I keep most of my colony in a tank with some dwarf cichlids (ocellated shell-dwellers). The cichlids are too small to bother adult or half-grown Endler's, but they eat all the babies. The best Endler's are in another tank with no baby-eaters so that they can breed freely.

My cichlids, although only 1.5" long, are eager predators, and no baby Endler's survive in that tank despite it being heavily planted.


----------

