Quarantine surprise

[redfish]

We put new guppies in two quarantine tanks yesterday.  One tank has a boy and girl that we were going to try to breed after quarantine.  Well, the girl just dropped a bunch of babies.  

I started the tank on the med trio before the babies and didn’t plan to feed for the first week.  Now I guess we need to either separate the babies if possible or start feeding the tank.  

I hoped to have a few weeks or more before having babies.   What food for baby guppies? LOL

[Griznatch]

Easy fry works pretty good, and flake food ground up works as well.

[redfish]

Anybody else ever have fish give birth during quarantine?  The fry are doing well so far.  We counted around 16.  We are feeding crushed up flakes.  I moved the male and female to another quarantine tank with meds.  I'm curious what we get with the fry from a mystery dad. Hope to find out a 3-4 weeks.

[PineSong]

On 9/12/2022 at 4:47 PM, redfish said:

Anybody else ever have fish give birth during quarantine?  The fry are doing well so far.  We counted around 16.  We are feeding crushed up flakes.  I moved the male and female to another quarantine tank with meds.  I'm curious what we get with the fry from a mystery dad. Hope to find out a 3-4 weeks.

I've had fry born in QT several times. Crushed flakes will work well. If you keep your water quality high, they should do fine--but it may take much longer than 4 weeks to see what their full color development will look like. I would plan on 3-4 months at least and sometimes more like 6 to judge their truly final colors and fin/tail length. Either way, I hope it's super fun for you. I love breeding my mutt guppies because literally every male looks different--so interesting to see what pops out.

[redfish]

@PineSong

6 months??? WHAT.  Just kidding.  I appreciate the info/recommendation to be patient.  I have been feeding some Hikari bio-pure freeze-dried daphnia also. I'm not sure which the are eating but I keep feeding them.  I have been trying to feed a few times a day but not completely regimented on it.  Water quality is still good but will consider a water change/cleaning in a few days.

[Cinnebuns]

On 9/12/2022 at 10:09 PM, redfish said:

6 months??? WHAT

For FULL color yes 6 months is common. You can mostly tell what they will look like far before then tho. 

Are you medicating the fry tank now?  Reason I ask is because internal parasites are passed from mother to fry. Might be something to consider. I can't speak on the safety of medicating fry tho. 

[redfish]

Thanks.  Yes, the fry were born in the tank hours after I added the med trio.  It doesn’t seem to be affecting them any.  After I moved the male and female, I had to medicate their new quarantine tank too.  I ordered more tubs today to keep up with demand 🤣