Guppy Poecilia reticulata

Yes, and only one of our three pond sources plans for it. Aquarium Genius asks for plants because the moss provides shelter for newborn fry and will protect them from hungry adult guppies, which is the same reason our indoor stations ask for cover. Pond Informer publishes nothing about breeding or fry outdoors, and Tropical Food Garden nothing either. What decides how many fry survive in ponds is the same thing that decides it in tanks: dense plants at the water surface and along the sides, not a procedure. Our java moss record is the plant those sources name most often, and two more they name, water wisteria and duckweed, are still in our queue.

Four, if you take the two pond sources together: Pond Informer asks for a minimum of 5 gallons per guppy and Aquarium Genius asks for at least 20 gallons in total without naming a population. The number that matters more is the one after that. This record carries upwards of 200 young at once from Aquarium Source, births approximately every thirty days from Aquarium Co-Op, and young for six months or more from a single mating, so a pond stocked with two females in spring is not a four fish pond in August.

Our three outdoor sources want air and split on filtration. Aquarium Genius calls a filter optional, saying many other experienced fish keepers that have had a guppy pond do not use one, while recommending an air pump. Pond Informer asks for a small filter and some form of aeration via an air pump, bubbler, waterfall or similar. Tropical Food Garden reports a bubbler and suggests a solar aerator. Indoors this record is unchanged: filtration is not one of its nine fields, and station 03 covers the tank.

One source builds the pond around it. Aquarium Genius asks for thirty days without fish first, because the 30 days without fish gives the algae a chance to grow, and then feeds the fish once a week because the pond is producing food. That is the reverse of the aquarium answer on this site, where three records exist to graze algae off glass and our water and health topic reads it as a symptom. Outside, in a container nobody is keeping clear, it is food and cover.

Three outdoor sources say yes and one of them puts a season on it. Aquarium Genius: guppies are tropical fish, and unless you live in a tropical climate you will only be able to have an outside guppy pond during the warmer period, starting when the temperature is unlikely to drop below 70 °F. Pond Informer publishes a tolerance of 55 to 86 °F, saying they do best in the 70s. Our own record runs 63 to 82 °F, and station 01 prices the warm end at eighteen months of life against three and a half years at 72.

Two answers, and they measure different things. Pond Informer asks for a minimum of 5 gallons per guppy and a pond at least a foot or two deep, to keep it from heating too quickly in the sun or freezing entirely in winter. Aquarium Genius asks for at least 20 gallons or 75 liters in total. Read together, twenty gallons is four guppies on the first source’s figure, and this record’s indoor minimum is 10 gallons.

Yes, and it is why they were moved around the world. Aquarium Genius calls the larvae in an open pond the great guppy food, and Pond Informer reports that ponds with guppies had 30 percent fewer mosquitos than those without after only a month. The peer-reviewed source on this record is more careful: Warbanski and colleagues, in Ecology and Evolution in 2017, measured a 99 percent reduction in mosquito biomass in their own mesocosms and still write that the literature on their efficacy in mosquito control is equivocal.

This is the question no pond guide we read answers. The same 2017 paper records that the species has established populations in 60 countries globally, that guppies are still deployed into artificial ponds, water storage containers, sewers and natural waterways, that they have a negative impact on Trinidad’s native killifish, and that in Hawaiian streams native goby abundance decreased twofold. A pond that overflows in a storm or gets tipped out at the end of the season is a release, so net the fish, take them indoors, and empty the water where it cannot reach a drain or a waterway.

One male to two or three females, from Aquarium Co-Op, and station 05 says what it is for: it reduces stress on the females, and the ratio is not a breeding control. Three of our sources give a version of it, one as one male to two or three females and two as two to three females per male. The same figure read the other way is the male to female guppy ratio people ask about when they want fewer fry, and it does not help, because a female arrives already carrying and can produce young for six months or more from one mating.

Our sources name a staple and a supplement rather than a product. Indoors the base is a small dry food, high quality flakes or pellets on two sources, with live or frozen foods rotated in, fed one to three times a day and only what is eaten in a minute or two. Outdoors the two pond sources disagree by a factor of fourteen: pellets once or twice daily, as much as they can eat in 3 to 5 minutes, against once a week in a pond that grows its own mosquito larvae. Pond Informer is the only source we hold that publishes a protein figure: at least 20 percent for adults and 30 to 50 percent for fry.

Ten gallons on this record, and station 03 is about why the five gallon answer keeps appearing: one source will keep them in five and the other three ask for ten, on a fish that arrives pregnant. The two strain listings in station 08 both give 10 gallons minimum as well, one of them adding 20 or more for a breeding group.

pH 7.0 to 8.5, hardness 143 to 536 ppm and 63 to 82 °F, which makes this the first record here that wants hard, alkaline water rather than soft and acidic. Station 02 has the source for each end. The outdoor source agrees inside our range, publishing pH 7 to 8 and 10 to 20 dH, and adds a figure no aquarium source we hold gives: 7 ppm or more of dissolved oxygen.

A line of the same species, sold under both word orders. Aquatic Arts describes brilliant solid red coloration enhanced by distinctive albino genetics, and publishes up to 2.25 inches, 72 to 82 °F, pH 7.0 to 8.2, 8 to 18 dGH and a 10 gallon minimum, every one of which sits inside the rows on this record. Albino here means what the variety guides say it means: no melanin, so no black markings, and eyes without pigment that read as dark pink or red.

Pet Zone describes a vibrant red body with intricate dragon-scale-like tail patterns, selectively bred from wild guppies in Southeast Asia, and publishes 1.5 to 2.5 inches, 75 to 82 °F, pH 6.8 to 7.8, a 10 gallon minimum and 2 to 3 years. That pH floor is the only figure on any strain page we read that sits below this record’s own, by two tenths of a point.

Both variety guides treat white and platinum as the same name. Tankarium: platinum is another name for guppies with a white or albino body color and pearlescent scales. FishLab calls the white guppy, also known as the platinum guppy, popular with beginners. Neither publishes a single figure for it, so the water, the tank and the group on this record are the whole answer.

The question mixes two things, and one of our sources says so. There is one species here, Poecilia reticulata, and the rest are lines: FishLab refers to nearly 300 unique species and then files its whole list under fancy guppies of that one species, while Tankarium answers that there is no accepted answer since it just depends on how you categorize guppies with different traits, and that domesticated guppies are nearly all hybrids that will freely interbreed if given the opportunity. The only rarity claim we found is for the Moscow line, bred in Russia in the 1960s and called a rare and expensive morph.

2 to 2.5 inches, 50 to 64 mm, on this record. The two strain listings are close and neither is wider: up to 2.25 inches from Aquatic Arts and 1.5 to 2.5 inches from Pet Zone. Males are the smaller and more colored sex, which station 05 uses for sexing rather than for size.

Upwards of 200 at once, on Aquarium Source, after a gestation of 21 to 40 days. It is the only source we hold that gives either number, and neither Seriously Fish nor Aquarium Co-Op states a brood size at all.

The part that matters more is what happens next: Aquarium Source states the adults will eat the fry alongside any other community fish. So the number that reaches adulthood in a community tank is nothing like two hundred, and the difference between the two figures is a separate tank with fine leaf plants in it.

Two to three years on this record, and two sources now give that figure: Aquarium Co-Op at 76 to 78 °F, and PetMD as two to three years with proper care. Aquarium Source is the outlier at 2 to 5.

What makes this record unusual is that one source puts a price on the number. Aquarium Co-Op states eighteen months at 82 °F and three and a half years at the cool end, which makes lifespan the one field here that moves with a dial you control.

PetMD, which is written by veterinarians, is the only source we hold that names any. It lists ich, dropsy, described as a fluid filled coelomic cavity, fin rot and tail rot, pop eye, swim bladder disorders, cancer, and parasitic, bacterial, fungal, oral and skin infections. Aquarium Source names ich, as tiny white dots, and fin rot.

This record transcribes that list and stops there. It holds no treatment, no medication and no dosing, because no source we compile from connects a treatment to this species, and inventing that link is exactly what this site exists not to do.

The record prints 7.0 to 8.5 from Seriously Fish, and four care sources disagree inside it. Aquarium Co-Op asks for 7.0 or greater with no ceiling. Aquarium Source gives 7.5 to 8.0. PetMD gives 6.8 to 7.8.

The two strain listings in station 08 sit inside it too, at 7.0 to 8.2 and 6.8 to 7.8, and the outdoor source in station 07 gives pH 7 to 8. All three care sources that publish a band overlap between 7.5 and 7.8, which is a third the width of the recorded range and the closest thing to a target available. What every source agrees on is the direction: this is a hard water, alkaline fish, which is the opposite of most of the rest of this site.

Not as a requirement, and three sources name plants anyway. Aquarium Source names java moss and aquatic fern, asks for a lush environment filled with vegetation, and separately names fine leaf plants and grasses for a breeding tank. PetMD names guppy grass, java moss and duckweed.

Java moss is on both lists. The fry are the reason the second list exists: fine leaves are what a one week old guppy hides in, and a bare tank with adults in it is a tank with no fry in it a week later.

Our records support one group in the mid water layer, at a ratio of one male to two or three females, which is where a trio comes from. What no source we hold gives is a number of guppies per gallon. The figure that decides the answer is not the starting count: a single female can produce between 5 and 100 young, every four to six weeks, for six months after one mating.

Aquarium Co-Op states five gallons for a trio, and adds that ten or twenty is more appropriate in the long run. Seriously Fish asks for a larger base than a five gallon has. Our record prints ten gallons, and the reason is the brood figures rather than the adults.

Hard and alkaline. pH 7.0 to 8.5 and 143 to 536 ppm from Seriously Fish; Aquarium Co-Op asks for 7.0 or greater and for hard water with calcium and magnesium in it. This is the only record on this site whose pH floor sits above neutral, and it is the most common thing people get wrong about the fish.

It depends what you want, and this is the one record here where the source says so. 76 to 78 °F gives two to three years of life. 82 °F speeds up growth and breeding and cuts the lifespan to eighteen months. 72 °F slows development and pushes the lifespan past three and a half years.

Two to three years at the recommended temperature, from Aquarium Co-Op. It is the first fish record on this site with a lifespan on it at all, and the figure is not a property of the guppies so much as of your heater.

Seriously Fish states that a female can produce young for six months or more after a single mating. The male does not have to be in your tank; he has to have been in some tank with her within the last half year, which for a shop bought fish is close to certain.

Between 5 and 100 from a single female, per Seriously Fish, with a gestation of four to six weeks. Aquarium Co-Op does not give a brood size and gives the interval instead, approximately every thirty days. The spread on that first figure is the honest shape of the answer.

At one setting each, and this is ours rather than either source's. The guppy pH floor is 7.0 and both of those records have a ceiling of 7.0, so the ranges meet at a single number. With the kuhli loach the hardness meets at a single number too, 143 ppm. Nothing forbids the pairing; the arithmetic leaves it no room to move.

Both sources name corydoras, which is a record here. Seriously Fish also names other livebearers, rasboras, tetras and small loricariids, and the otocinclus record on this site belongs to that last family. What both sources say to avoid is fin nippers and aggressive fish, with tiger barbs on both lists.

Yes, and an adjustable one, because on this record the setting is a decision rather than a default. The tolerated range runs from 63 to 82 °F and the lifespan varies by a factor of more than two across it, so a heater you cannot set is a choice made for you by a manufacturer.