The case of the dead guppies

Posted by Sarah on August 18, 2009

Jeff and I were talking to someone this weekend who’s having trouble keeping guppies alive.

He said he’s bought guppies from all over town to eliminate inbreeding, but each time the guppies manage to die within a few days of purchase.

At first he was keeping the guppies with mollies and swordtails, but after he read online that you couldn’t keep guppies with mollies and swordtails he started keeping the guppies in a tank by themselves.

For the record, we’ve kept guppies with mollies and swordtails, and although we haven’t had many surviving guppy fry, the adult guppies were fine.

The swordtails and mollies did hunt down any kind of fry that were in the tank, so if you’re trying to breed, I wouldn’t suggest keeping them together.

Although Jeff and I didn’t determine if the guy with the problem was actually buying from all five of the local stores in the area, at various times I’ve seen guppies that didn’t look healthy in all of the local stores.

We were pretty fortunate with our guppies – we did have one batch of feeder guppies that died – I think the male feeders are prettier than some of the fancier guppies, so we tried them first, even though they don’t always get the best care.

Of course that reminds me – I should have asked the guy if he was using feeders, but he did say he purchased some at a store that I know doesn’t sell feeder guppies, so he probably was buying at least some fancy guppies.

Our second batch of guppies – three females and one male did great. They also didn’t eat their fry, so we woke up one morning to see about 20 newborn guppy fry floating above the heater, with the adult gupppies happily swimming around the tank.

Unfortunately, our guppies have all died now, so we didn’t have any to offer.

Since I’d just done my daily browsing of Aquabid, I suggested that he check out Aquabid for endlers or guppies. Some of the strains are even advertised as not eating their fry, which is great if you’re interested in breeding them, either to sell, or to feed to your other fish, like this guy was doing.

Have you had anything similar happen?

I have heard several times that livebearers in general don’t seem to be as healthy as they once were due to inbreeding.

Have you noticed this?

Do you have any suggestions for someone who keeps having trouble finding guppies that will stay alive locally?