Keeping Guppy Strains

[PaleoShrimp]

Hi Everyone,

I recently bought some show quality guppies that I absolutely love. I’ve done some reading online and pretty much all the resources say that if you want to preserve a show guppy line you need 8-10 tanks. What I’m wondering (and couldn’t find online) is can you keep producing decently nice looking guppies with only 3-4 tanks. I’m not really wanting to show these guppies and am hoping I won’t need to set up a fish room just to keep some nice looking ones going. I’m pretty new to guppies and only have top quality ones because a member of my club shows them and gives really good deals to club members. 

[lefty o]

its a lot of work to maintain a strain really well, but i dont think you need 8-10 tanks. a few tanks yes, because over time you will want to cross them back against each other .

[T. Payne]

You can absolutely do this with 4 aquariums. When I kept guppies I had one aquarium for the breeding adults, one for fry, one for juvenile females and one for juvenile males. Worked out great for me, this way I could select the next generation of breeders after seeing them color up and select for the looks I wanted.

[FishRBeautiful]

I’m planning to do a single tank with guppies only. You probably have to add new ones from time to time though I imagine.  4 tanks sounds sufficient to me. I wish I had the means to do that

[sumplkrum]

8-10 tanks is if you want to do selective breeding over many generations. You generally line breed two lines (a couple tanks each). Then cross them every 3-4 generations to keep them in decent shape. They are assuming you need a couple tanks for your breeding pairs for each line and grow out tanks for babies - that's where those numbers are coming from.

You can reasonably community breed them in two tanks. Cull any bad fish immediately. Cross fish between communities every few generations to keep them from inbreeding too hard.

It won't necessarily keep them 'show quality' if you're not line breeding, but you don't need to go crazy with selective breeding if you just want nice fish to look at.

Edited April 11 by sumplkrum

[Cinnebuns]

It all comes down to goals. If you want to line breed the highest quality fish then yes 8-10 tanks is needed. If you want to still do high quality but you don't care to make thm as perfect as possible, then 4 is completely fine. I did 4 tanks when I was breeding guppies. You can still do some selection in your breeding with 4 but you may run into issues in later generations because you aren't able to cross as much. That's not a major issue though if you aren't expecting perfection. It's all about expectations and goals.