Fancy Guppies

Fancy Guppies are one of the best fish to own. They are very inexpensive, especially when being compared to salt water fish. Guppies cost around $5.99 for a pair of guppies. You can tell the males apart from the females very easily. The males are much more colorful, having color on their bodies as well as their tails. Females only have color on their tails. Some females have no color at all. Guppies live to be around 2 1/2 years old. Guppies can start reproducing at about 2 months old if they are mature. Guppies remain pregnant for 22 to 25 days and then they can have anywhere from 2 to 60 babies per batch. This means each female has between 2 to 60 babies once a month. Now you see why they call guppies the Millions Fish.

If you are thinking about buying guppies to put in your fish tank I would suggest that you purchase one female first. Buy a female which appears to be pregnant. She will have a black dot right in front of her tail. You could ask the person working at the pet store and they will give you a pregnant female. Within the next 3 weeks you will have another 2-60 more guppies. Guppies are livebearers which means they don't lay eggs. The babies simply swim out and fall to the bottom of the tank, where they peck on food along the rocks.

Make sure you do not have a filter plugged in or they will surely get sucked inside of it. I have personally found many baby guppies in my filter. Guppies are low maintenance and very inexpensive to feed. They eat premium fish flakes and brine shrimp. In order to get the babies to mature faster you will need to feed them beef heart. You can buy this in bulk for very cheap in any grocery store or pet store.

If you want to keep the babies you will need to catch them as you see them. All the other guppies in the tank will eat the guppies almost faster than you can catch them. Otherwise you could put the pregnant female in a breeder tank and the babies will swim to the bottom for protection. The female will not be able to get into the bottom compartment and you can release her back into the tank.