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I have a 10 gallon tank that I was thinking about setting up specifically for guppies. Is there anything special I need to know about setting it up? How many should I start out with? How do I go about adding the salt to the water? Thanks in advance for all your expertise knowledge

Hey, thats a good way to start with guppies. Well in a 10 gal, it doesnt really leave you with much space for fish, and guppies are prolific breeders, so you could go one of two ways, either great filtration and a lot of cover so the babies can grow or keep it somewhat empty and you wont have to worry about over population. I know it is awful to say, but true. Currently in my kitchen right now we have great, great, great (well you get the idea) grand guppies of the ones we started with almost 20 years, every few months or so we buy a new pair or two and swap them with an older pair to keep good genetics, these fish outlasted two ten gals. The other guppies go into one of the other tanks we have. We just keep getting more and more that we had to set up more and more tanks; currently I believe there are more guppies in our family than people in the city we live in. I guess that was a long-winded way of saying they like making babies so be prepared. I have read that salt is good for them but have never personally used it for the guppies, for the salt just use the directions on the box that should work, I suggest feeding a wide variety of fish foods to them, we buy everything possible and mix it into a bucket, then freeze the rest for longer keeping, I find the colours seem so much more brilliant this way.

Lastly keep in mind good lighting, because the babies need the light to form properly.

Have fun and let us know how it goes
-ed-

guppies..theres a rule if one inch of fish per gallon of water i think and i have seen people with tanks full of them with no ill effects and they looked healthy..as far as breeding yes they breed all of the time and have babies every 28 to 35 days or so. if your thinking of getting into this you might want to start off with two males and four females that would be plenty of fry if you decieded to get another tank to rear them in other wise i hope you have some friends that have an empty tank that you can share your blessings with..if your buying pure strains you better have a lot of tanks set up for the selective breeding process..im curently devideing my ten gallon tanks into two five gallon tanks trio in one side other side for babiesor to just put the females in the other side to have their young so i can put them into another ten g.i have friends so i wont have any trouble of getting rid of my culls so if you live near a local pet shop you might just offer to give them some of them saying your tank is over loaded but this is furthur down the road as of now since your asking about the how many..