Roscoes Aquariums

Roscoes Aquariums

Roscoe's Aquariums

GUPPIES

This male guppy has a cobra tail and really shiny irridecance on the body. There are many tail shapes to choose from and colours. If you want guppies there are two ways to go about it. Either by a pair and expect lots of babies! Or don't mix genders in one tank. Guppies have babies about every 26 days so if you buy a male and female you need to plan for this fact. Some people breed them to genetically create new colourations and large size. Most female guppies can reach up to 3 inches, males are much smaller. The babies are born live and the average is from 10 to 40 babies each time. Guppies live for up to two years. Many breeders participate in contests for new size, tail shape and colouration. To breed a strain that repeats the characteristics it can take a couple of years of careful segregation and planning. However, with little planning your kids can sure learn lots about nature with guppies. Also once a female is pregnant she will have up to 3 births as they store sperm. This means that nice fat female you pick at the store is probably already pregnant. The best way to have the babies is in a hatchery as with most fish tiny fish tend to get eaten.

Water temperature: 28degs Celcius, guppies are fairly tolerant to ph levels this tank has a ph of 8.5 which is on the high side due to the water here. You can buy many ph correction chemicals however I try to add as little as possible to the water, if you fish are purchased locally find out from your pet store how they treat their water, the fish will be used to it that way. Remember a guppy likes to have babies in weeds...try to keep your tank natural, create a realistic environment for them. Guppys eat flake food, and also love algea. Mind you most people hate green tanks, keep your tank out of direct sunlight and maybe add a plant or two. Plants need light, co2, and fertilizer. Plastic plants need cleaning. There are many kinds of filters on the market to choose from so here is the basics on tank set up.

Tank size, 10 gallon or larger is best however, you can go as small as 2 gallons. A good rule for small fish is one inch of fish per gallon of capacity. Next, you need a heater that is sized for your tank size. Next get some water treatment to remove clorine and heavy metals from your tap water. Clorine will also disappear from your water if you let it stand in a bucket for a couple of days. Personally I use the additive. Then add your filter. In my tank I use a sponge filter and air hose. This bio filter is really inexpensive and works ok in a small tank if you keep it clean and refresh the water frequently. Gravel looks nice but it sure traps debris, so i recommend a gravel cleaner syphon and no more than 1/4" of gravel. Add up to 30% of the tanks capacity of new treated water once a week at minimum. Simply syphon out the gravel and debris with the syphon and then put it the new water slowly. Remember adding cold water to warm water can shock your fish if you do it too fast.

Female pregnant guppy in hatchery set into the tank. If you look close you can see babies in the separate area of the hatchery. This plastic hatchery works well and fits in almost all aquariums.

female with two males, note sponge bio filter, uses air pump for filtration bottom right and weed cover in the background. Water temp 28celc.

guppy fry in a separate grow tank, temp 26celc. Feed babies with ground up tiny,tiny flake food. You can buy baby food if you like if you crush the adult flakes remember to make the pieces smaller than pepper flakes....put some in a baggy and rub it around until you get really fine powder. Guppies also like brine shrimp! You can buy brine shrimp frozen. Babies should be fed small amounts three times a day. I feed mine flakes in the morning, brine shrimp for lunch, and flakes for supper! Remember just small amounts all they can eat in about 2 minutes is perfect! Uneaten food will poison your tank it creates ammonia. Ammonia kills the fish. You can purchase ammonia reduction chemicals but it is better to remove all uneaten food and keep your tank gravel really clean, and do the water changes mentioned earlier.

Someone once said.....Guppies just add water and watch them grow, yes these fish are not only colourful and interesting they are really easy to keep. Great for kids and adult too! Good luck with your fish if you have any questions my email is Roscoe45@actcom.co.il don't be afraid to send a picture or two. I reserve the right to post any pictures or stories you send on this site or others. Feel free to copy these pictures if you like this site is my opinion and should be taken as just that. My opinion. Hope you enjoyed your stay and found some helpful things here thanks for dropping in!

OTHER LIVE BEARING FISH

Mollies, Platys, Swordtails. I have Mollies and Sword tails both can grow up to 5 inches in a large enough tank. The breeding habits are much like guppies. Both are best kept with a ratio of one male to two females. Swordtails are interesting due to there elaborate mating rituals, quite the dance to watch. The tails on the male fin can grow to about 3 inches long. Sailfin molly males have a very large dorsal fin which waves beautifully as they swim. My male is very active both day and night! These fish like to eat flakes but will also feed off the bottom on small pellet food. As usual I also treat these fish to some frozen brine shrimp and frozen blood worms. Mine get fed twice a day in my large community tank. This tank has mollies, swordtails, clown loaches, gouramies, catfish, plecos, some apple snails. You will notice I do not have tetras, or other nippy fish in this tank due to the fancy tails and fins on some of the fish. My male sailfin did have a problem with his dorsal fin! Here is what I did to cure him. First I isolated him immediately in a small hatchery tank with the partitions taken out. Then I carefully scraped off the dead skin from his fin as it was all stuck together and he couldn't open it. For that i used a clean exacto blade knife. This was done slowly and gently just a tiny bit at a time. As I did this I gave him some of his favorite flake food and he was so busy eating he didn't even notice the cleaning of his wounded fin. After I cleaned all the fin up I added salt to his water. A good ratio is one teaspoon per gallon of water. Obviously in a small hatchery tank that was a hard measurement to do but I did the math and added one quarter teaspoon. I used non iodized rock salt, you can also purchase aquarium salt from your pet store. There is a lot of discussion about salt but the main thing is that table salt has chemicals added to it to stop it from sticking together in your salt shaker. I beleive these chemicals may not be good for the fish. The other medicine I added was Methylene Blue. One drop per 3 litres is normal but you can go up to one drop per litre in an extreme situation. I kept him in this for two days till all the white fin damage disappeared. He is now roaring around in the tank again and busy showing off his large dorsal fin to his lady friends in there! I am hoping with time the fin will grow back as big as it was before it got hurt.