What is the difference between male and female guppies? What should we pay attention to when breeding guppies? Why do a clutch of baby guppies die before they grow up?

How to distinguish male and female guppies? In fact, I thought this question seemed a bit naive at first, but after thinking about it carefully, it is indeed a problem for some fish farming novices. This is related to one's own understanding and the sales of merchants. You cannot rely entirely on yourself. Therefore, this issue cannot be called naive.

The appearance of guppies is very different. Generally speaking, in addition to the wider, more elegant and colorful tail fins, male fishes also have more colors on their body parts, while the female guppies Relatively speaking, although the tail fin is larger, it is not very bright. The most important point is that the body color of the female fish is dull, and most of them have no patterns.

The other thing is judging the shape of the pelvic fins, which is very intuitive. The pelvic fins of male fish are tubular, while those of female fish are fan-shaped. I won’t explain this much.

There is another point to note: if it is a small guppy fry without color, then there is almost no comparison between male and female. Generally, we can only accurately judge after color development. If a merchant who buys fish tells you to catch small guppies in pairs before they develop color, then he is probably deceiving you. Talking about the issue of male and female guppies, some novices may also be "cheated" by merchants. This has nothing to do with the merchant's sales.

I once met a friend who said that the guppies he bought did not give birth to any fish after raising them for several months. When I went to his house, I saw that all the male fish were the same color. Although they were fat and beautiful, they were only one. There is no female fish, so how can it possibly give birth to baby fish? The reason is that the merchant said that if he bought it back, he would definitely give birth to small fish, and the fish caught in the tank were all beautiful male fish. According to him, the tank was full of such fish. In fact, if you go to the fish market, many businesses keep male and female fish separately for sale, and beautiful male fish always sell better than female fish. If you are really a novice who doesn't know how to distinguish, you will probably buy a group of "smooth" guppies, then you still don't know the male and female, and no matter how well you raise them, you will definitely not be able to give birth to small fish.

What should we pay attention to when breeding guppies? There are indeed some issues worth discussing about the reproduction of guppies. Let me analyze them in order. There is no doubt that mating is the only way to reproduce. Theoretically, guppies that live in groups are not "monogamous". Therefore, as long as there are male and female fish in the same water body, they can reproduce. (As an adult, the fish and the water are normal) Guppy is a small fish that is ovoviviparous, that is, the big fish directly gives birth to small fish. Before giving birth to guppies, we need to determine whether they are ready to give birth? It is best to isolate the female fish from other fish in advance to wait and give birth separately.

So, the guppies are about to give birth, what do we need to do to make the guppies successfully give birth to big fish and small fish? In fact, the production of guppies is not difficult. What is difficult is the survival rate of the fry after production.

First of all, you must make sure that your domestic peacocks The fish is about to give birth? Then you need to make sure that the female fish has obvious dark fetal spots on the abdomen (some vitreous bodies are pink, but they are also darker and will expand). Only the female fish in this situation is the female fish that is about to give birth. There is no need to deliberately do anything for pregnant guppies, as long as they maintain the usual breeding environment and conditions.

Of course, in order to ensure the physical fitness of pregnant female fish, it is also necessary to add some clean live fish food, such as silk earthworms and other live food, to increase nutrition. If you don’t want the baby fish produced by your guppies to disappear in an instant, then I strongly recommend that you isolate the pregnant female fish separately until they give birth, and after giving birth to the baby fish, isolate the parent fish and the fry at the same time.

Why does a nest of small guppies grow and then disappear? I said before: the production of guppies is not difficult, the difficulty is the survival rate after production! Many aquarists give birth to many small fry when raising guppies, but they rarely grow until they reach adulthood. The reproduction rate of guppies is high, but the survival rate is not high. This is also an indisputable fact! So, the little guppies grow and disappear. Where did these little guppies go? Scenario 1: Being eaten by a big fish.

Guppies are oviviviparous fish and can swim flat and take off soon after giving birth. At this time, they are quite fragile. If there are other larger fish nearby, even the parent fish may swallow them. Your own baby fish, therefore, your guppy fry will most likely be swallowed by other fish, so this is what I mean by isolation. Of course, it would be better if there are densely planted aquatic plants in the fish tank, but the loss of small fry is still inevitable.

The second situation: death from disease. Friends who keep guppies, I believe that almost all of them will encounter this situation: the little guppies have long tails and shrink up, and then they die one after another very quickly. This is because the little guppies are suffering from a parasitic disease - Pintail disease. I have a previous article specifically talking about pintail disease. Pintail disease of small guppies is a parasitic disease caused by "third-generation worms", which ultimately leads to the inability of small guppy fry to eat and swim, and ultimately leads to the serious consequences of mass death of small guppy fry.

Nine out of ten cases of guppy fry dying from illness are due to pintail disease. Of course, there are other possible causes of illness, but if the water quality is normal or remains unchanged, death from illness is almost impossible. As for other losses of guppy fry, most of them are related to factors such as water quality fluctuations and improper feeding, including congenital deficiencies.

Overview: It is not difficult at all to distinguish male and female guppies. You can tell the difference by looking at the appearance after the hair color. However, novices need to make a clear confirmation through comparison.

As for the breeding of guppies, if we are sure that there are male and female, we can easily realize the wish of the big fish to give birth to small fish.

I strongly recommend that aquarists isolate the pregnant female fish in advance and raise them alone until they give birth. At the same time, they increase nutrition and give the pregnant female fish a quiet living environment until they give birth to young fry for a few days before rejoining the tank. Reproduction rate is not equal to survival rate! The small guppies will disappear as they grow. I have only discussed two possible factors with high probability: "being eaten" and "pintail disease". After all, the growth of small guppy fry is the most important thing to pay attention to. Point, as long as you can isolate and prevent, you can greatly increase the survival rate.

In short, guppies are not difficult to raise, but they cannot be raised casually. Especially for guppy reproduction and the growth of small guppy fry, isolation and prevention are very critical!