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I purchased some feeder guppies to cycle my Eclipse 6 and 3 gallon aquariums and today I noticed that one in the 6 gallon seems to be pregnant. She is looking mighty plump and is showing the black spot near her anal fin (sorry, forgot what it is called ). Now on to my question. How long will it take for her to have the babies? This may be hard to answer without actually seeing her but I was just wondering what a ballpark figure would be. Also, what do I feed the babies? Will crushed flake food work? Thanks in advance for the help!

Crushed flake will work fine for the fry.
Livebearers are capable of storing sperm for quite some time so you will quite likely get several batches from a lone female. 28 - 35 days is the estimated time between drops from experience.

Good luck with your guppies.

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Before you criticize someone walk a mile in their shoes. That way you're a mile away and you have their shoes.

Hard to tell when exactly she will drop, but given that you say she is really plum she might be due within one week (as early as right now).

Lindy said this already, finely crushed flakes are good. Someone here gave me the tip to put the flakes in a plastic bag (like a ZipLock) and then rub the flakes through the plastic until they are really really tiny. That worked well for my Platy fry.

If you want to “save” as much fry as you can then you would have to either remove the adults as soon as the mother is finished dropping, or provide loads and loads of hiding spaces for the fry (fake or real grass is good). Or you could get the mother in a breeding trap that has a divided bottom where the fry could “fall” through. If you want to save them, I would recommend placing them in a breeding net afterwards.

But keep in mind that your 6G is gonna be really packed in no time .

Hope this helps,

Ingo

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Proud Member of the New Jersey Aquatic Gardeners Club

it depends. if you see the eyes/ the 2 big dots inside her stomach that means she will have them VERY soon!if she stops eating that means she will have them in a day or two.yes crushed flakes are good to feed the fry.

Thanks for all the replies. After waiting up until the wee hours of the morning waiting to see if she was going to have the babies I finally went to sleep. I woke up this morning and I don't think she has had them yet because: 1. I didn't see and fry and 2. She still looks mighty plump. Hopefully she will have them soon.

28 - 35 days is the estimated time between drops from experience.

It's taken 20-25days for mine. I wrote down the date and estimated number of fry in notepad everytime. I move the female to the 5g 20days from her last batch and within a few days or even the next day I get fry. If I don't move a male with her though she starts eating her fry. I think the male is so busy chasing her to rebreed that they don't have time for fry snacks.

You'll notice the guppy girl start to get "boxy"... her stomach starts to sort of look rectangular. That's an indication that the drop is a few days off at the most.

Here's one of my girls who dropped a couple days after this picture...



Also, in some females, the gravid spot turns from black to a sort of reddish color when she's about to drop. I know one of my girls is either dropping about now, or in the next day or so. I hate the sperm-storing thing... drives me nuts sometimes.

Last edited by kitten at 30-Oct-2005 13:23[/font]

~Meow. Thus spoke the cat.~

That is true about the red spot on her gravid. I noticed it in one of my guppies just the other day. Thought something was wrong with her. She delivered about 2 days later.
I feed my fry frozen baby brine shrimp. I let it thaw out and just pour some in with them. I have actually saw fry just a couple of days old eat the this food. Funny to think with them being so small that there is something even smaller than them that they can eat that we can see. Youd have to get this at a LFS. They keep it in small frigs like the sliding glass door coke containers in stores or something of the sort. It goes alongggg way and cost about the same as really high quality flakes.

Last edited by ladiejl at 30-Oct-2005 17:33

Thanks for the help.