How to Breed Fancy Guppies

Asking an aquarium owner how to breed fancy guppies is a bit like asking one how to keep the fish wet. As long as you have a male and a female fancy guppy in your tank, breeding will take place. But, if the goal is to breed fancy guppies to get viable, attracitve, or even show-quality guppy fry, the answer to the question becomes more complex.

Breed Fancy Guppies - Choosing Stock

The first step in any successful guppy breeding program is choosing the male and female individual fish you want to breed. A bunch of fancy guppies in a communal tank will breed indiscriminantely and produce many different color and pattern variations as well as wild type gray guppies.

Choose fancy guppy parents that share color or pattern combinations that you want to replicate. If only one has the desired style, breed that male with a blonde female. These females, which are pale yellow in color, have mostly recessive genes and the offspring will usually take the appearance of the male.

Breed Fancy Guppies - Create the Mood

Fancy guppies hardly need moonlight and roses to get in the mood for breeding, but aquarium set up can still be important. Male fancy guppies will chase female to the point of exhaustion. Provide hiding holes or dense natural plants to give the female a chance to get away from her pursuor when she needs to. A small fish tank is ideal for breeding just one pair of fancy guppies.

Breed Fancy Guppies - Save the Fry

After mating the male should be removed from the breeding tank. Not only is he no longer needed, he will harass the female fancy guppy still. This stress and exhaustion could cause reabsorption of eggs or an early drop before the baby fish are formed.

Fancy guppies gestate for approximately twenty-eight days, but could be on either side of that number. Watch the dark gravid spot on the female fish's abdomen.

One option is to use a breeder box with separate sections for the mother fish and the fry she will drop. Many fancy guppy enthusiasts think it is better to use a heavily planted birthing tank to reduce stress on the mother. Protecting the fry from the mother is essential, as guppies will eat their own young.

Breed Fancy Guppies - Caring for Fry

After the guppy fry are dropped and the mother has a chance to recover from her stressful ordeal, move the female guppy back to the community tank. The baby fish, or fry, should be cared for in the nursery tank or breeder box until they are large enough to join the other fancy guppies in the main tank. This usually takes several months.

During this waiting period, most serious fancy guppy breeders will cull the fry for quality. Culling is essentially killing and disposing of the guppy fry that have undesireable traits. It is an essential part of fancy guppy breeding when quality stock is wanted.