Can Guppy Fry Survive In A Community Tank?

Written by John Sawyer in Fish Species,Guppy

A guppy owner will be curious to know if their guppy fry can survive in a community tank with adult guppies and other tankmates or should they move them to a separate breeder tank. So let us find the answers to your question. 

Keeping guppy fry in a community tank is not recommended by the experts. However, if you have decided to keep them in a community tank, then make sure to provide them a hiding place by adding stationary or floating clusters of plants to hide among the leaves and be safe from the predators. 

There are several ways to protect your guppy fry in a community tank which we will discuss in this article. So, let’s get deep into it.

Is it safe to keep guppy fry in the community tank?

Both parents and other adult tankmates will eat the guppy fry. Thus, the experts do not recommend keeping the guppy fry in a community tank. There are ways to protect your guppy fry from adult tankmates, but that solution will not ultimately make all fry safe. 

If an owner has decided to keep their guppy fry in a community tank instead of a separate breeder tank. There are some ways to protect your guppy fry by making the hiding place and separating them from the adults.

How to protect guppy fry in the community tank?

An owner should make sure to design a tank so that their guppy fry can get enough space to hide and protect themselves from the hungry predators and the female guppy. Things we can add to give protection to our guppy fry are:

Plants

Adding plants to your aquarium will help the guppy fry to hide. You can add these plants to make a hiding place for your guppy fry:

  1. Guppy Grass: Guppy grass is a very popular plant to add to your guppies tank. It is easy to maintain and gives much of a hiding place to a guppy fry. 
  2. Java Moss: This plant can tolerate a wide range of water parameters, so it is easy to maintain for beginners also. Java moss provides a good hiding space and protects your guppy fry. 
  3. Java Fern: Java fern is a hardy plant, and keeping multiple of them close to each other will make a good place for your guppy fry to hide. 
  4. Duckweed: Duckweed is a floating aquarium plant. This plant grows very fast, so an owner should keep an eye on it. Duckweed provides lots of hiding places to your guppy fry as it grows very fast. 

You can add any plant, live or artificial, to make a good hiding place for your guppy fry. Adding live plants will benefit you in many ways, as it will help you clean the water too. 

Breeder box

If an owner has no option to keep the pregnant female guppy separated, then they can go for a breeder box. A breeding box is a small plastic container that you can fit inside your tank. 

You can keep your pregnant guppy inside the breeder box and shift them back to their tank once they release the fry. Then, the guppy fry will stay in the breeder box.

This method is easy as the breeder box is designed to keep the water flow through, but the fry will remain in the box only. Also, an owner doesn’t have to worry about the water quality of the container. 

Food

An owner should make sure to provide food to the tankmates in regular intervals so they don’t try to eat guppy fry out of hunger. 

These are all the methods and techniques you can apply to protect guppy fry from the other tankmates. But an owner should know that they will not be able to save them entirely even by using all these methods.

They will lose some fry as the mother guppy, or other adult tankmates will eat some of them. 

Keeping the guppy fry in a community tank comes with a very high risk of being attacked by tankmates and parents. 

Suppose you are keeping your guppy fry in a community tank with other guppies and tankmates.

There is nothing to worry about the water condition in such a case as your guppy fry will live comfortably in a water condition in which the adult guppies are happy to live.

But if you are keeping your guppy fry in a separate tank, then you have to maintain their tank. 

Tank maintainance

There are tricks you can perform to make your guppy fry grow fast and healthy.

  1. Water temperature: Keeping the water temperature at 80 degrees Fahrenheit will be good for guppy fry as warm water will help guppy fry speed up the metabolism, making your guppy fry eat more and grow faster.
  2. Aquarium Lights: An owner should make sure to keep the lights on for at least 14-16 hours a day. Keeping bright and strong light is not essential, but it will help avoid any abnormalities in their spine. Make sure not to switch on the lights all day long as your guppy fry also needs rest, so keep the lights off for 5-6 hours a day so they can have rest. 
  3. Water Change: An owner should make sure to change the water regularly. Fresh water helps guppy fry to grow faster. Make sure to change 50 percent of water two times a week. 

These are some tricks you can use in a separate guppy fry tank to make your guppy fry grow healthier and faster. 

How to feed guppy fry?

Feeding your guppy fry proper food is essential as their growth and health depend on the food you provide them. A newborn guppy fry is approx 6mm and has a very tiny mouth. However, they are very small in size but have a huge appetite. 

The Guppy fry digestion cycle is about 25-30 minutes which means you can feed them every time after every 30 minutes of feeding. Feeding your guppy fry each time after 30 minutes is not essential, but you should provide them food 5 to 10 times a day for their faster growth. 

You can feed your guppy fry once a day if you are keeping your guppies for fun, but provide them food for 5-10 times a day if you are running a breeding operation to earn profit. 

Guppy fry will happily feed on anything that you provide to your adult guppies, but make sure to crush the food before feeding them so that that it can fit into their tiny mouth. 

Live food is the best to feed your guppy fry like micro worms, shrimp, or daphnia. However, you can also provide frozen or dry food to your guppy fry if you don’t have access to live food. You can also feed your guppy fry flake foods, but an owner should crush it in small pieces before feeding flake food to their guppy fry. 

A guppy fry needs to have food in a proper way and in an adequate quantity to grow faster and healthier. 

Conclusion:

As discussed above, the expert does not recommend keeping a guppy fry in a community tank. But, if an owner has decided to keep their guppy fry in a community tank, then there are ways to protect the guppy fry from adult tankmates and parents. Adding plants to your tank will provide them enough space to hide, and this way, they can protect themselves by hiding. In addition, there are more ways to fix a breeder box in a community tank and provide enough food to the adult tankmates so that they don’t feed on guppy fry out of hunger. 

Reference: ResearchGate

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