How often can I expect guppies to have a fry

[outspoken]

I recently got my 10g tank up and running and have 3 Cory's (not sure of sex), 7 Tetras (3 female, 4 male) and 5 Guppies (2 female, 3 male). One female guppy was pregnant when purchased and had her fry in a matter of a few days. It was killed off by the community shortly after. A few days later another female became pregnant and had her fry this morning. I was only able to save 3 of the bunch as I didn't have time to separate before she gave birth. Right now I have the 3 in a breeder box and don't expect them to live but will do my best.

My question is, how often can I expect guppies to be pregnant in this type of a community setup?

[Brandy]

real talk? 3 males to 2 females, you can expect them to be constantly pregnant.

They will probably have a drop about once a month? It depends a bit on how much food they are getting I think, more food = more frequent and larger drops. If you add a lot of fine leaved plant cover and rock piles with small gaps, some fry will start to survive without intervention. If you save them all you will be shortly overrun.

[outspoken]

10 hours ago, Brandy said:

real talk? 3 males to 2 females, you can expect them to be constantly pregnant.

They will probably have a drop about once a month? It depends a bit on how much food they are getting I think, more food = more frequent and larger drops. If you add a lot of fine leaved plant cover and rock piles with small gaps, some fry will start to survive without intervention. If you save them all you will be shortly overrun.

Interesting! Well, this could propel me into getting another tank, which I wouldn't mind. However, I should consider just letting them try and survive "in the wild" as it were.

[Ken Dyer]

The seem to have fry about every 30-45 days in my experience, less often if you really want the strain to thrive (perhaps perception bias) 😉 The babies are very small for some strains and pretty helpless at first and tend to get picked off without enough cover (old picture below of a guppy fry on a piece of hornwort for context). You can end up with as many as your tank and maintenance routine will allow.

 

 

 

 

[Alesha]

Yes. They are constantly pregnant. The best way to not be overrun with fry is to just let them survive on their own. 

True story - we started with 14. (I didn't know any better.) And ended up with over 500. Literally. We counted each one as we took them from our 20-gallon to the new 55-gallon. We've given them away to friends, LFS, etc. Had a bad tank-wide case of wasting disease. We still have over 300 guppies. They are incredible! 😃

And as we come out of the disease/medication/recycling season, they are having babies again. Several batches in the past 2 weeks.

So...proceed with caution. But enjoy! Guppies are truly incredible fish. ❤️