rm
Passport
- Family
- Guppies
- Grows to
- 5 cm (2")
- Lives
- 2–3 years
- Temperament
- Peaceful
- Care
- Beginner
- Swims
- Near the surface
- Keep
- In a group of 3 or more
- Water
- 17–28 °C (63–82 °F)
VenezuelaTrinidad and TobagoGuyana
Care requirements
i
On record for Guppy: adult size, lifespan, minimum tank, temperature, ph, hardness, minimum group, diet, care level, swim level, tank length.
A figure that is not on record is left out rather than guessed. One marked Suggested comes from keeping knowledge rather than a page.
- Minimum tank 38 L / 10.0 US gal
- pH 7–8.5
- Hardness 8–30 dGH
- Diet omnivore
- Tank length 45 cm minimum
Keeping notes
Keep it away from fin-nippers like tiger barbs and serpae tetras. Everything else about it is easy.
Care notes written from general aquarium knowledge, not from the cited sources.
About
Hardy, colourful, cheap, and they'll breed whether or not you asked them to. Plan around that last one: guppies are livebearers, a female stores sperm from a single mating for months, and the tank you started with three fish in becomes a tank with thirty.
The modern fancy strains are noticeably less robust than the old wild-type stock. Decades of selecting for finnage and colour have left them prone to disease, so buy from somewhere that keeps them properly and expect the tail to be the weak point.
The males are the colourful ones with the big fins. The females are larger, plainer, and where all those fry come from.
Tank setup
Your sex ratio decides whether this tank is a pleasant one. Males chase females relentlessly, so run two or three females per male, or keep males only. One female with several males will be harassed to exhaustion.
Give them cover at the surface. Floating plants and dense planting let fry survive and give the females somewhere to escape to, and both matter more than any decor.
Hard water suits them. Guppies come from hard, alkaline water and are one of the few tropical fish that genuinely do better in it — a soft-water tank is the wrong home for them.
Feeding
Guppies are omnivores and enthusiastic about more or less everything. Use a quality flake as the staple, add frozen daphnia and brine shrimp, and give them some vegetable content — a little spirulina keeps their colour up.
Feed small and often. They've got small stomachs and constant appetites, and they'll carry on eating well past the point of sense.
Avoid: overfeeding. In a guppy tank it's the direct cause of most water quality problems, because the population is nearly always bigger than the keeper has counted.
Filtration and flow
They aren't demanding, but once they've bred they're a heavier bioload than their size suggests. Filter for the population you'll have in six months, not the one you bought.
Keep the flow gentle to moderate. The long-finned strains struggle against a strong current for the same reason bettas do.
With plants
Completely safe with plants. They won't eat or uproot anything, and heavy planting is the best single thing you can do for them — it protects fry, gives females refuge, and buffers the water quality against the overpopulation that's coming.
Health
Fin rot and columnaris are the two you'll meet, and both track water quality and stress rather than bad luck. Those elaborate tails on the fancy strains are the first thing to go.
Guppies are notorious for arriving with something already wrong. Quarantine if you can, and be sceptical of stock from a shop with visibly ragged fish in the tank.
Expect ich after temperature swings, and velvet occasionally — a fine gold dust, and flicking against surfaces.
The strain matters more than people admit. Some lines are simply weak, and no amount of good husbandry fixes that.
Breeding
This takes no effort at all, which is the problem rather than the achievement. Females give birth to free-swimming young about once a month and can produce several broods from a single mating.
Adults eat the fry, their own included, so a planted tank gives you a steady trickle of survivors and a bare one gives you almost none. That predation is the main thing keeping the numbers down.
If you want to control the population, keep a single sex or keep a fish that eats fry. Deciding after the fact rarely works.
Tank mates
Avoid12
- Chinese Algae Eater Chinese Algae Eater is aggressive and Guppy is peaceful and easily intimidated.
- Convict Cichlid Convict Cichlid grows to 15 cm against Guppy at 5 cm, big enough to eat it.
- Jewel Cichlid Jewel Cichlid grows to 15 cm against Guppy at 5 cm, big enough to eat it.
- Least Killifish Guppy grows to 5 cm against Least Killifish at 2 cm, big enough to eat it.
- Scarlet Badis Guppy grows to 5 cm against Scarlet Badis at 2 cm, big enough to eat it.
Only with care19
- Agassiz's Dwarf Cichlid Guppy and Agassiz's Dwarf Cichlid are an uneasy mix: guppies and sth american cichlids - dwarf are a pairing to watch.
- Bala Shark Bala Shark is a risk to Guppy: guppies and sharks are a pairing to watch.
- Bolivian Ram Guppy and Bolivian Ram are an uneasy mix: guppies and sth american cichlids - dwarf are a pairing to watch.
- Cherry Barb Guppy and Cherry Barb are an uneasy mix: barbs and guppies are a pairing to watch.
- Cockatoo Cichlid Guppy and Cockatoo Cichlid are an uneasy mix: guppies and sth american cichlids - dwarf are a pairing to watch.
No conflict is recorded with the other 75 species in the database, so nothing to flag. 2 species are not covered at all, so they could not be judged either way.