Guppies in 10-Gallon Tank

[GuppyLover123]

I just had a question that I was hoping one or more people could answer. How many guppies do you think I could fit in a ten gallon tank? 

[lefty o]

if its just guppy's, and in a 10 hopefully all 1 sex,4 is a nice number ,but 1 or 2 more is not impossible.

[sumplkrum]

Yeah. If they're young you can fit quite a few in a 10 gal. ... but that should be temporary. They need space to grow out to adult size.

With some plants and regular water changes like 6 adults is probably max.
Good mature females can be almost 3 inches.

 

[Rezeki]

If it's temporary, you could probably fit 30-40 as long as you kept a close eye on water parameters. If it's permanent, I wouldn't let it get above 10-15 fully grown guppies. I had around 70 in a 20 gallon for a few months no problem (lots of christmas moss helped a lot with soaking up the extra nitrate), but there were only 20 or so fully grown guppies. Water changes were a bit more frequent than I normally had to do (every other week instead of once a month), and I made sure to run an air stone in there in addition to my sponge filter. By the time I got rid of them, there were definitely way too many, and I ended up donating them all to my LFS to start fresh with a new fish

[Galabar]

However many you put in originally, if you have males and females, you'll end up with *a lot*.

I've got a 29 gallon that started with a few, but not has 100+ guppies of various sizes.  They seem just fine, with lots of empty spaces in the tank (they tend to stay near the top, or bottom, looking for food).  I need to add a predator for the fry...

[Whitecloud09]

On 5/23/2024 at 2:07 PM, GuppyLover123 said:

I just had a question that I was hoping one or more people could answer. How many guppies do you think I could fit in a ten gallon tank? 

4-5 males. 2-3 females, but not all those in the same tank. One or the other. Female tank or male, 

 

On 5/23/2024 at 2:43 PM, lefty o said:

if its just guppy's, and in a 10 hopefully all 1 sex,4 is a nice number ,but 1 or 2 more is not impossible.

Agreed.

[JMC]

What are you trying to accomplish?  If you’re trying to keep a lot of guppies and are willing to do a lot of maintenance then you could keep 30-40 in a 10 gallon as @Rezeki stated above. If you want a low maintenance tank then keep 10 or so. 
 

But they’re live bearers so you if you mix males and females (or females that have been kept with males as adults) you will have more than 40 in no time!

As live bearers though if you want 30-40 then only buy 1-2 males and 2-4 females and in a month or less you’ll have 30-40.

[Whitecloud09]

Yes, the main thing here is maintence, how much how often? Are you willing to keep 30-40, or are you jut gonna get the normal amount? @GuppyLover123, just asking Qs to get some ideas.....

On 5/23/2024 at 10:48 PM, JMC said:

What are you trying to accomplish?  If you’re trying to keep a lot of guppies and are willing to do a lot of maintenance then you could keep 30-40 in a 10 gallon as @Rezeki stated above. If you want a low maintenance tank then keep 10 or so. 
 

But they’re live bearers so you if you mix males and females (or females that have been kept with males as adults) you will have more than 40 in no time!

As live bearers though if you want 30-40 then only buy 1-2 males and 2-4 females and in a month or less you’ll have 30-40.

 

[HelplessNewbie]

We have dwarf panda guppies that bred with fancy guppies in our 10 gallon display. Started with 5 or 6 mixed sex last August, which had 3-4 dozen fry. But most of the adult females perished and eventually only 2 adult females remained after 7 months. The rest are mostly males of the dwarf variety. Total adults are about 20 now and holding steady.

[gardenman]

Going way, way back, 1960's era, I had a relative (my grandfather's brother) who had a ten-gallon tank that was so packed with guppies you couldn't see much other than the guppies. We're talking hundreds of guppies with just an air-driven corner box filter as the filter media. I'd bring home a jar of guppies from time to time and you wouldn't even notice that I'd made a dent in the pile of guppies in that tank. These were the common guppies and nothing fancy, but they all seemed very happy and were certainly breeding nonstop. Is that ideal? No. But you could do it. And food back then was the granules that came in the little cardboard saltshaker type of round box, so nothing special. That tank had been set up forever and never seemed to have a problem. If you look at modern koi farm videos, you'll see some holding tanks packed with smaller koi at nearly that density. Is it ideal? No. Can it be done? Certainly.  It's not a question of how many you could put in, that number could be anything from one to a thousand, but how many you should put in. The guppies (and any livebearer) will add more and more to their numbers on their own.

[Tony s]

On 5/23/2024 at 2:07 PM, GuppyLover123 said:

How many guppies do you think I could fit in a ten gallon tank? 

It depends on what you’re really wanting. If you’re wanting babies, I’d start with a trio of high quality guppies. Then they’d fill out the tank to what it would support. Keep something like guppy grass, hornwort, or water wisteria in there to provide fry cover.

if you’re wanting a colorful tank with lots of movement. Maybe 5-6 of all male guppies. You could even order higher end ones online to improve their health and survival.

[Whitecloud09]

On 5/24/2024 at 9:17 AM, Tony s said:

It depends on what you’re really wanting. If you’re wanting babies, I’d start with a trio of high quality guppies. Then they’d fill out the tank to what it would support. Keep something like guppy grass, hornwort, or water wisteria in there to provide fry cover.

if you’re wanting a colorful tank with lots of movement. Maybe 5-6 of all male guppies. You could even order higher end ones online to improve their health and survival.

Yes online guppies are prob going to be more healthy then fish store guppies. If you want a colorful tank, males of very cool looking breeds would great. @GuppyLover123