Feeding baby guppies

[MGilchrist]

Hi All

My relatively new guppies have started doing as guppies do and breeding like mad 2 lots dropped 40 plus babies, so in the interest of keeping or selling them, am looking for suggestions for live food, prefer something easy to keep and raise.

currently just on ground up flake food and bloodworms when they get big enough

any ideas

[livebearer_breeder]

alright what r u keeping them ina trap or a tank? to start with feed them on the commercially ground up flake food for atleat a week then i make my own concocsion of food, buy blood worms and livebeaering food in freeze dried form, then i break it up very fine, so they have a healthy diet of blood worms and tubifix worms and flake food, also do a water cchnage of there tank every three days that way they will grow faster, make sure the type of filter you have is no to powerful, i suggest you use one of those pump drivin ones and have it ona low setting, that is generally what i use. when they get to about 2 weeks old you should be able to sex them by useing a torch and putting a black piece of paper on the back of the tank, shine the torch through the whole and you will be able to see a small gravid spot on the females, i would then remove the males from the females, put them, each sex into different average sized tanks, 60litres tanks will do, let them grow and slowly ween them off crushed food into normal food, when they have grown chose what male and femal you like the most and breed them, yo start getting the best line breed of guppies you have. then do all of the above over again:D

Cheers Shae

[MGilchrist]

Thanks Shae

as i said, am already feeding flake and bloodworms, did not mention it but also freeze dried tubifex worms, tank is a four ft by two by two with a fluval 404, as such i am looking for suggestions for a live food i can culture hoping there will be less fouling of the tank and good nutrition for the fish, have considered BBS but would be awkward, also considered egg yolk but as fry are spread out and hiding in plants etc fouling of tank would be a problem

thanks for the other suggestions but i have no intention of getting into line breeding, i will keep what i like and get rid of others.

Mark

[livebearer_breeder]

your tank is too big mate, i doubt most of the fry will even find food you wont somthing like a foot tank to start with, and daphinia or bbs would work perfectly, and ud fined there isnt as much polution becuz the babies find the food easily, my baby set up is a 1 foot tank with a pump powered filter and some java moss and other plants that relise micro organisms that the fry will eat, i feed them 5 times day, and like i siad do a water change every 3 days, then seperated them and move them into bigger tanks to mature, also your fluval 404 is way too powerful and any baby near the input nosle will be sucked into.

[MGilchrist]

A TANK CAN NEVER BE TOO BIG

that said it was built as a community tank and guppies were brought to help stock it.

Given that all the fry are still alive (month now for first batch) and growing well they are finding food and are not being sucked willy nilly into the filter.

If some do not survive, stiff cheese, i worked long and hard on tank and stand and it ain't changing.

what i would like to do is help them grow faster. BBS is a possibility but awkward to do for me, don't know how daphinia is grown, but was hoping for a worm that could perhaps be cultured in an ice cream container or the like.

[fins]

micro worms would be good if it was a bare bottumed tank. But they would still be good if it had gravel.

[Caryl]

white worms are easily grow in ice cream containers (and it is fun eating the ice cream first). Daphnia is another easy live food to grow in a half mussel float or old bath in the garden somewhere.

[MGilchrist]

Thanks Caryl, Fins

so where do i get some and how do i keep them growing i assume warm and dark but what do you feed em on and how much?

[fins]

I just have them in an ice cream container with a mix of corn flour, rolled oats and yeast. It produces about a 2 inch thick line of them all around the edge of the container every feeding time.

[MGilchrist]

sounds excellent