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my female guppy gave birth in april. I didn't even know until i noticed little guys swimming around a plant. there were 6...those are now almost fully grown and since them i've had 4 other births..problem is the second birth i only found 1..and since then i've been putting the females in a breeding trap, which i don't feel is a good idea bc the fry don't seem to have enough space while they drop. In subsequent droppings, i've found 5 and just a couple days ago 3 of about 30 survived..... any suggestions would be helpful.

These fish are all in a 60 gallon, and there are:
-2 serpae tetras
-2 red black tetras
-1 betta, male
-1 swordtail, male
-1 platy, male
-6 neon tetras
-6 zebra striped danios
-the before mentioned guppies (plus the two mothers, 8 of them are still fry)
-1 pleco

Your problem... MOST of your fish are avid fry eaters.

Betta, swordtail, danios, likely the tetras... probably the pleco if it can catch them. The only fish that probably wouldn't be going after the fry are the neons. Even guppies will eat their own fry sometimes.

Not much of a mystery... either keep using the breeding traps or get a ten or twenty gallon to put the female in before she gives birth and raise the fry in there before returning to the big tank. In this case, however, you know that only the best, brightest and/or the fastest fry are surviving. You could try tossing in a fine leaved plant or moss into the tank for the fry to hide in... hornwort or java moss would work.

~Meow. Thus spoke the cat.~

the last two times the females were in a trap..just i'm wondering if because they don't have alot of room to fall is the reason they're not surviving.... some are still in the little ball and my mom told me that if they can't unleash their head and tail from each other, and they hit bottom, they don't survive...
thanx for your advice...

I do not believe that it's because they do not have enough room to fall... they don't have enough room to escape the mama's mouth. Some of my mom's eat all the fry if they can, some of them could care less... Kitten said it right though, if you leave them to be born in with all of those other fish they will get eaten as well. Good luck!

I agree...someone in that tank is most likely eating the fry, and there are quite a few possibilities, including the mom.

I kept platies as the main fish in one of my tanks a while ago. I very rarely saw fry though. When I started guppies in another tank I put in a huge amount of hornwort so the fry would stand a good chance. I can't say for sure though that that's what work, it could also be that I got lucky with guppies that aren't interested in eating their own fry.

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There is water at the bottom of the ocean