Feeding guppy fry at home. What do guppy fry eat in the first days of life. How long do they grow

Guppies are aquarium fish, quite unpretentious. Precisely because it is not difficult to keep them, breeders, starting with beginners, breed them in their home "reservoirs". What else is attractive guppies? They have unusually beautiful bright colors, they are mobile, so the presence of these fish will decorate any aquarium.

Guppy - viviparous fish: formed already in the tummy of the guppy mother. They are born almost fully formed and capable of independent living. Small guppies are called fry. After birth, they are placed in a separate aquarium.

It is after birth that aquarists have an important question : what to feed fry guppies.

Guppy nutritional features

Small guppies need to be fed differently than adults. If the big ones are fed twice a day, then the kids are fed 5 to 6 times. Feed at one time give so much to eat immediately. Otherwise, it will settle to the bottom and create life-threatening conditions for the fry in the aquarium: in the water a lot of nitrogen is produced, which will lead to the death of the offspring of guppies. In addition, water changes should be daily. It should be taken only from the aquarium where dad and mom swim.

It is not necessary to say that feeding is an extremely difficult issue, since the fry are ready to eat food that is also fed to adults. The only question is the size of this food: it should be much smaller, since the mouths of guppy fry are very small. If you feed dry food, then it needs to be kneaded between your fingers so that it turns into dust.

You can choose another option: purchase a special food (Tetra MicroMin or Sera Micropan) intended for feeding fry. Both foods are balanced, so you don't have to add anything: your fry will receive a complete nutrition in accordance with their age.

There is also substitute MicroMin, which contains all the vitamins that are required for guppies in the first days of life.

In order for the fry to grow full-fledged, they need to be fed carefully. You need to be especially attentive to them in the first week. In addition, the light must not be turned off even for a minute, otherwise the fry may die.

How to feed guppy fry at first?

How you feed your pets in the first five days will depend on their full growth and development. Don't forget to feed them on time. Fish must find food at any time.

Better use live food:

• It can be living dust (a "ciliate shoe" is suitable, but you can feed it for three or five days).
• microworms that you have grown yourself on chopped carrots, or purchased at a pet store,
• nauplia, cortemia, rotifers (grind!).
• Dry food is also appropriate, but it should be used for feeding fry only once a week.

For the first seven days, food is given 4 to 5 times daily. In the second week, four meals a day will be enough. From now on, crumbled bloodworm, tubifex, nematode can be added, but this complementary food can be given only once a week.

The fry eat well live food substitutes, which you can cook yourself at home: chicken yolk, scrambled eggs, yogurt and other food.

How to prepare live food substitutes?

It is advisable not to feed the fry with dry food during the first month. The thing is, you can't fill it properly. Excess food "rots", forming a film on the water area of ​​​​the aquarium. She doesn't let air through. In addition, small guppies cannot swallow such rough food.

What else you need to know about feeding

Question, what to feed guppy fry, is important in the future. After two months, you can feed the tubifex, daphnia, cyclops, thread algae. Plant foods won't hurt. From ready-made compositions, use Gordon's mixture. From the first days you need to monitor the balance of food. If this is not done, then no quality nutrition will further help in the proper development of fry. It will not be possible to obtain a bright color, and the collapse of the tail will not meet the desired characteristics.

Need to feed guppies according to weight:

1. From birth and during the first 14 days, food is plentiful, 50-70% more weight.
2. From the 15th day to the age of two months - from 80 to 100%
3. After two months - about 30%.
4. When the guppies are divided by sex, you need to feed even less - about 15% of the weight.
5. Those fry that are left as producers should be fed with caution, significantly reducing portions: feed is only 3 to 5%.

You can transplant grown fry into a common aquarium after three months. Adult guppies will not be able to harm them.

Distinctive features in feeding guppy fry

Guppies are viviparous fish, therefore, after the female spawns, newborn fry will begin to look for food, moving around the entire aquarium. Particular attention should be paid to them in the first week of their existence. Most of the successful breeding of guppies depends on competent and proper feeding. It is worth waiting for healthy and beautiful fish only if they are fed regularly.

After the birth of offspring, female guppies are able to eat their cubs, since they are deprived of maternal instinct, and the size of the fry does not exceed 3 mm. To keep them safe, the fry should be transplanted into another vessel immediately after the end of childbirth.

Feeding fry is different from feeding adult fish. For guppy fry, the process of eating 5-6 times daily is characteristic. Feed is poured as much as they are able to eat at a time, otherwise it will fall to the bottom of the vessel and the life of the fry will be in danger: the water will be saturated with nitrogen, and this is detrimental to guppies. The water in the tank with small cubs should be changed daily from the aquarium in which their parents live.

Feeding for guppy fry is a simple process, since their food is no different from the food of adult fish. The only caveat is the size of the food, the mouths of babies are small, so it must be crushed into pollen.

For the rapid growth and development of guppies, it is necessary to keep the lighting in the aquarium open for several days.

Feed varieties

Let's take a closer look at how to feed guppy fry in the first days of their life.

The best option is live food, namely:

At home, you can make a substitute for live food yourself: scrambled eggs, egg yolk, yogurt or other food that the fry willingly eat.

It is impossible to choose one hundred percent the best food among all types, since each of them has its pros and cons. The most important thing is to try to feed the guppies systematically, balanced and moderately.

Feed commercial enterprises

Special food for fish is sold at any pet store. The most common are dry food and solutions from the Tetra brand of German manufacturers. The paste of such a company is dense and includes the following composition:

• fish liver;
• beef liver;
• yolk;
• artemia;
• mosquito larvae;
• milling of germinated wheat and other products.

To prevent infection, the production of such products uses ultraviolet irradiation of feed.

Food of natural origin

According to many guppy lovers, live food is the starting food for fry, since such nutrition is typical in the natural environment.

After the birth of guppies, they are given “live dust”, and after a week, you can feed them in the form of rotifers, brine shrimp, crushed bloodworms or microworms.

Aquarists have long studied the technique of self-feeding guppy fry from a variety of foods. How to feed fry at home, consider below:

• Egg food - boil the egg, remove the yolk and rub it on a grater, add to a container of water. The mixture must be stirred until a homogeneous consistency, and then added to the aquarium with a pipette.
• Milk feed - a container of milk is placed in a pot of boiled water. After evaporation, the milk powder can be given to guppies.

It is worth noting that the grated yolk and milk powder are not a complete food, they should be added with other top dressings.

• Live food - this method consists in breeding a microworm, fry love to eat it. To dilute this protein, you need to mix cornmeal and water (should resemble sour cream), add a quarter of a teaspoon of yeast. Put a microworm in this porridge (you can take it from fish lovers or find it on the street in wet fallen leaves). After a few days, it will multiply and it will be possible to feed the fry with it.
• Plant food - the diet of guppy fry should be saturated with plant foods. It includes zooplankton - living microorganisms and phytoplankton, expressed in small algae. In the first days of their existence, fry feed on such vegetation with pleasure, each of its grains varies from 0.02 mm to 1 mm.

Phytoplankton is grown quite simply: water from the aquarium is poured into a jar and placed on the windowsill under the falling sun. Photosynthesis takes place and algae begin to grow. After a few days, the water will turn green and you can add it little by little to the vessel with the guppy fry.

are aquarium fish that are one of the favorites of all aquarium breeders. They attract beginners with their unpretentiousness and simplicity of maintenance, and professional connoisseurs of domestic fish by the fact that they are able to dilute the content of any aquarium with colorfulness and mobility.

This type of fish belongs to. This means that the initial development of a new organism occurs in the mother at its expense, and, being born, such fish are more or less formed and ready to grow independently. Young fish from birth to maturity are called fry. It is important to understand their features for the correct construction of the nutritional part of the content.

How to feed guppies in an aquarium?

First of all, you need to remember that you can leave guppy fry in an aquarium only if other types of fish do not live there, for which newborns will become regular food.

Feeding fry should be plentiful and constant. In the first 7 days, you need to produce it at least 5 times a day. Later, you should switch to three meals a day and follow this pattern until you reach the age of one month. Food should be evenly distributed around the entire perimeter of the aquarium, so as not to cause pandemonium and fight for food.

What is the best way to feed newborn guppies? For the very first days of life, the so-called “live dust” is ideal. This is a common name for a variety of small plankton. It consists mostly of ciliates, rotifers, nauplii of crustaceans and other tiny living organisms. It is not difficult to obtain such food.

How to get "live dust" for guppy fry?

1. Bringing home water from a pond or puddle, you need to properly strain it. For this, a fine sieve or ordinary rare gauze is suitable.
2. After the first spill, only superfluous and unnecessary will remain on the sieve - dirt, dry parts of plants and the like.
3. Then we leave the resulting water for several hours so that its temperature rises to room temperature.
4. Now we take two nets of different density. Daphnia, cyclops and similar microorganisms will not pass through a moderately small net, and representatives of “live dust” will remain in the smallest net. After catching, both of them need to be seated in containers with clean, settled water. Its height should not exceed 4 centimeters, otherwise the living creatures will die.

If you don’t have such food and it’s not possible to get it, you can feed guppy fry with nothing more than a crushed microworm. Or the easiest way is to go to the nearest pet store and buy live food for fry there.

The aquarium lighting should not be turned off for the first week, even at night, as growing guppies benefit from light.

In the future, fry can be fed with more varied food. Small cyclops, daphnia, brine shrimp and tubifex should be added to the diet, after grinding. It is not always recommended to feed guppy fry with any dry food. No more than once a week, you can apply the smallest variety of dry food, leaving the main diet for the living.

It is important that despite the careful selection of live food for guppy fry, you do not forget to alternate it, since even the highest quality food of one variety can slow down the development of fish. After all, the diet in the first month of life of guppies determines their size, health and life expectancy.

Guppies are unpretentious small-sized aquarium fish, the simple maintenance of which explains the popularity of the species with both beginners and experienced breeders. An important feature is that they are viviparous - fry are formed in the mother's abdomen and are born already capable of independent life. One individual can produce from 10 to 100 babies at a time, depending on its age, but then the question arises of feeding offspring. We offer you to figure out how and what to feed guppy fry correctly and what nuances you should pay attention to.

Features of feeding

Before the offspring appear, the female is placed in a separate aquarium so that the young that appear do not become food for other adults. The fry are kept and fed separately until they become competitive for life in a community aquarium. The nutrition of small fish differs from the diet of adults and has the following features:

frequency - for babies, 5-6 meals are required during the day, all food should be eaten in one feeding. The sedimentation of food residues at the bottom of the aquarium creates a dangerous increase in nitrogen content for guppies, which can lead to the death of offspring;

food sizes - unlike food for adult fish, food for small guppies should be much smaller. Dry food before serving in the aquarium is crushed between the fingers to a state of dust;

lighting - it is forbidden to turn off the light in the aquarium, especially the first week;

the amount of food served. From birth, for the first two weeks, guppy fry should receive a plentiful amount of food, which would exceed their weight by an average of 60%. In the period up to two months, the ratio of portion sizes to weight is twice the excess. Only after two months of age, grown-up fish begin to be fed moderately - first offering food in the amount of a third of their weight, and in the future - 15%.

Three months after the separate keeping, the young can be returned to the general aquarium - they are already old enough and large fish will not be able to harm them.

Nutrition in the early days

Almost immediately after birth, the fry begin to look for food. The most important feeding period for the breeder is the first 3-5 days, when the kids should get plentiful, good nutrition with the lights on all the time. On the first day and all week, you can offer the fish the so-called "live dust" - live food of small size. Such nutrition includes ciliates, rotifers, microworms on oatmeal from carrot juice, brine shrimp nauplii, etc.

In the first 5 days, food should be provided up to 5 times a day, at any time the kids should find high-quality food - this will allow them to fully develop.

Natural food for fry over a week old

Preference for natural food is given by many experienced aquarists who are professionally engaged in breeding fish. From the second week, feeding is reduced to 4 times a day, supplementing the early diet with complementary foods in the form of crumbled bloodworms, nematodes, tubules (no more than 2 times a week). You can breed a microworm, which young guppies eat well and assimilate, on your own according to this scheme:

• prepare a nutrient medium - mix cornmeal with a small amount of water until a creamy consistency is obtained, add a little yeast to the mass;
• or take a microworm from another aquarium owner, or find it on the street in a humid environment of fallen leaves, and run it into the corn mass;
• after a few days, the microworm will multiply enough to feed aquarium pets.

Guppy fry older than a week are given:

• egg yolk from a hard boiled egg. It must be kneaded with a fork, slightly diluted with water from the aquarium and placed in a piece of gauze. The resulting bag is lowered into a container with guppy fry and shaken so that egg dust comes out - the young growth will eat it;
• at home, you can feed the offspring with an omelette. In the process of cooking, a teaspoon of dried and chopped nettle or hercules is added to the egg. Pour 50 ml of boiling milk into the mass with constant beating - in the process the egg will curl up, and the finished small omelet can be offered to the fry;
• milk powder. A container of milk is placed in a water bath and boiled until completely evaporated. The resulting powder is collected and offered as a top dressing for small fish;
• curdled milk. To coagulate the milk protein, the product is poured with boiling water, and the resulting clot is washed from the resulting whey. Feeding is done from the net, shaking it to release small particles;
• cheese. Hard or processed cheese without additives with a neutral taste is rubbed on a fine grater and dried a little. Such top dressing is given only in small quantities, since its excess can adversely affect water quality.

The described substitutes cannot be a complete food for fish, they can be introduced into the food system, but with the obligatory alternation with other feeds. It is important to add a small amount of algae, phytoplankton and other plant-derived components to the diet. From a month, the nutrition of fry is enriched with crushed bloodworms, tubifex, cyclops, daphnia.

Purchased food

It is widely believed that feeding guppies with dry food is possible only when they reach the age of one month, and the maximum frequency of such feeding in the first four weeks cannot exceed once a week. However, many prefer to feed aquarium fish fry on the basis of a special balanced food, to which nothing needs to be added. There are offers from MicroMin, Micropan Sera, etc., designed specifically for rearing offspring.

Popular is the starter feed from the German company Tetra. It is available in the form of a dense paste, which includes the following components:

• beef and fish liver;
• artemia;
• egg yolk;
• mosquito larvae;
• ground wheat germ, etc.

“Start” feeding is performed as follows: the neck of an open tube is lowered into the water, a portion of food is removed from it by light pressing, which gradually dissolves in the aquarium water and becomes suitable and convenient for fry to eat.

A big plus of purchased formulations is their balance, which is quite difficult to achieve when using natural food. So, vitamins A, T, carotene, calcium fluoride and other important components necessary for growth and development are added to the feed.

Proper feeding of guppy fry from the first days is the key to obtaining beautiful and healthy adults. Regardless of the chosen scheme - feeding with commercial feeds or live and homemade food - it is important to follow the basic rules regarding the frequency of feeding and its quantity. Any food for fry should be varied in composition, balanced and fresh, otherwise you can completely lose offspring.

Once the eggs have hatched, you are just beginning your journey in breeding fish and rearing fry. After all, raising fry is often a more difficult task than getting a couple to spawn, and getting caviar is half the battle.

On the one hand, most cichlids and viviparous give birth to fry large enough to immediately start feeding on artificial food, but the majority of aquarium fish, for example, give birth to very small fry, which must be fed with the same small food. Their fry are so small that they themselves could serve as food for guppy fry or cichlids.

Also, juveniles can only eat food that moves, and you will have very little time to train them to eat other foods before they begin to starve to death.

Next, we will look at the many different foods that aquarists use to feed fry. Each of them is quite nutritious in itself, but it is better to use several different ones to create a complete diet.

boiled egg yolk

This is a simple and inexpensive food for feeding fry. Of its merits, it does not create an unpleasant odor, which is the sin of live food and is very affordable.

To prepare the food, hard boil a chicken egg, remove the protein, all you need is the yolk. Take a few grams of the yolk and place it in a container or cup of water. Then shake or mix it thoroughly, in the end you will get a suspension that you can feed the fry.

If necessary, pass it through cheesecloth to filter out large pieces of yolk. Then you can give a suspension to the fry, as a rule, they stand in the water column for some time and eat them with appetite.

One yolk can feed a fry for a whole month, of course it will not keep that long, and remember to boil a new one from time to time. Do not add too much mixture to the aquarium at once, it decomposes quickly and can lead to the death of fry. Feed egg yolk sparingly, a few drops a couple of times a day.

Another problem is that the yolk, even after filtering, may be too large for some fry, will not be digested and will begin to disappear at the bottom. The smallest parts can be obtained using a mixer or blender.

Dry egg yolk

There is no fundamental difference between boiled and dry. Widely used in fry feed, but very easy to make yourself.

It is enough to boil the egg, and dry and crush the yolk. It can be added sprinkled onto the surface of the water or mixed with water and poured into the aquarium. It floats on the surface of the water, and the yolk mixed with water hangs in the water column for some time. Use both methods to give your fry maximum nutrition.

It is also good to feed small fish with dry egg yolk, as it is much smaller than the smallest flakes. The particle size of dry yolk is smaller than that of diluted in water, which is important if the fry is small.

Liquid artificial food

This food is already diluted with water. Sometimes the particles are too large for small fry, but manufacturers are constantly improving the quality of such feeds. New generations of food are already suitable for all types of fry, in addition, their advantage is that they hang in the water column for a very long time and the fry have time to eat.

dry flakes

Widely available, but although they can be fed to large fry such as guppies, they are not suitable for most others. Often the particle size is equal in size to the fry itself.

Live food for fish

Great food for any little one. They are easy to keep and very small (from 0.04 mm to 2 mm long and 0.10 mm wide). Unlike a microworm, a nematode culture can go without food for several weeks and will not die.

The nematode is a soil roundworm, Turbatrix aceti, which can also live in mud. Since nematodes are live food, they are especially suitable if fry refuse artificial food. In aquarium water, nematodes can live up to a day, so they do not poison the water quickly and can be eaten by aquarium fish fry during the day.

Nematodes live in a highly acidic environment, feeding on bacteria. To prepare a nutrient medium for them, take one to one apple cider vinegar and distilled water. Vinegar should be regular, no additives.

For example, we take half a liter of vinegar and half a liter of distilled water, mix and add a couple of tablespoons of sugar or a few apple slices without peel. An apple is needed to create a breeding ground for bacteria. After a week or two, the solution will become significantly cloudy, which means that the bacteria have multiplied rapidly and it's time to add the nematodes themselves to them.

The culture of nematodes can be bought on the Internet, on a bird or among familiar aquarists.

Add vinegar to the solution and put the jar in the dark. In a couple of weeks, the culture will be ready.

The most difficult thing is to filter out the nematodes, as they live in a very acidic environment and adding them along with vinegar can be deadly to the fry. You can pour vinegar into a bottle with a narrow neck, and cork it with cotton wool on top and pour fresh water on it. Nematodes will move through the cotton wool into fresh water and can be caught with a pipette.

Another method of breeding nematodes is even simpler and more commonly used.

As a nutrient medium, oatmeal or oatmeal, which must be brewed to a state of thick sour cream. After the oatmeal has been brewed, you need to add table vinegar about a teaspoon per 100 grams of the medium.

Next, the mass is laid out in a layer of 1-1.5 cm, laid out in saucers or other containers, and a culture of nematodes is placed on top. Be sure to cover the container so that there is a humid environment and does not dry out. Literally in two or three days, the nematodes will already crawl out onto the walls and they can be collected with a brush.

Of the nuances of breeding nematodes in such a way - the culture should stand in a warm place. The layer should not be too high, no more than 1.5 cm. If mold appears, then the medium was too liquid or little vinegar was added.

Of course, you need to feed the nematodes by adding fresh porridge from time to time. When? This will already be seen in the process. If the output has become smaller, if the medium has darkened or water has appeared on it, if there is a smell of decomposition. You can also feed with a few drops of kefir or carrot juice, even a couple of drops of live yogurt.

But it’s easier to have several containers with nematodes in stock and, in which case, just switch to another one.

The nematode is an excellent food - small, lively and nutritious. They can even feed fry of different sizes, since the nematode itself is also different.

Zooplankton - ciliates

Infusoria are not the only micro-organisms, they are a mixture of various micro-organisms with a size of 0.02 mm or more.

To grow your own shoe ciliate culture, place some hay, spinach, or dry banana or melon peel in a bottle of water and place it in a sunny spot.

The problem is that you can't control the types of microorganisms in such a culture, and some can be toxic to the fry. To protect yourself, first scald hay, spinach or banana peel and then adding a culture from familiar aquarists to the water, it is just dominated by the ciliate shoe. The water needs to be aerated to reduce fermentation odor, and a bottom siphon to remove leftovers will extend the life of the culture by a few more days.

So, fill a liter jar with water and bait - dry banana peel, pumpkin, hay and put a non-solar place. Add a culture of ciliates to the water, preferably from familiar aquarists.

If not, then you can even collect from a puddle, or a local reservoir, although there is still a risk of bringing something else. Wait a few days for the infusoria to multiply. There are two ways to catch - filtering through paper and lowering it into water or darkening the jar, leaving only one bright place where the ciliates will gather. Then you simply collect them with a tube.

Infusoria are not as hardy as nematodes, so a new jar will have to be launched every couple of weeks. However, they are extremely small and can be eaten by all types of fry.

Green water - phytoplankton

Ciliates can be divided into two categories: zooplankton (we talked about it above) are tiny microorganisms. Phytoplankton are tiny algae, ranging in size from 0.02 to 2 mm in length. Aquarists use green water as food, but it's actually phytoplankton.

Green water is extremely easy and simple to obtain. Just take some water from the aquarium, put it in a jar and put it in the sun. The sun's rays will make the water turn green within a couple of days. When this happens, simply add some water to the fry tank. Instead, add water from the aquarium.

This is very similar to breeding ciliates, only even easier. Any water from the aquarium contains both zoo and phytoplankton, but by increasing the amount of light, we stimulate the growth of phytoplankton. One problem is our climate, in winter or autumn there will not be enough sunlight, but you can just put it under a lamp, the main thing is that the water does not overheat.

Green water is simple, affordable, very small in size, it is perfectly eaten by fry from the first days of their lives. And most importantly, it does not die in the aquarium and serves as a source of food for fry for several days. For greater efficiency, you need to keep several cans at the same time, in case the plankton suddenly die in one.

If you have a microscope, then you can generally grow only the crop that you need, but as for me, this is already superfluous.

microworm

The microworm (Panagrellus redivivus) is a small nematode (0.05-2.0 mm long and 0.05 mm wide) that seems too small for a fry. But they have one quality that makes them stand out, they are very nutritious.

To create a microworm culture, mix cornmeal with water until thick and creamy, then add a quarter teaspoon of yeast. Place in a jar with a lid that has holes for ventilation, no more than 1.5 cm layer and add a culture of microworms.

It is easiest to take them on a bird or from familiar aquarists. But if there are none, then you can find a damp pile of fallen leaves in the nearest park, collect them and bring them home. In it you will find very small, white worms, which you need to add to the container with the nutrient mixture.

After a couple of days, you will see microworms that crawl out onto the walls and which can be collected with your fingers or a brush.

Malek eats them voraciously, but like nematodes, microworms do not live long in water, and it is important not to overfeed. When you collect them from the walls, some of the nutrient mixture may get into the water, but do not worry, it will also be eaten by the fry.

As a rule, it lasts for two weeks, after which the launch must be repeated. Hercules is also used as a nutrient mixture, but the smell from it is more unpleasant and the quality of our hercules leaves much to be desired. However, there are many recipes for preparing culture, you are free to choose your own.

Artemia nauplii

Newly hatched brine shrimp (0.08 to 0.12 mm) is widely used in the aquarium trade for feeding fry of various fish. They are active in fresh water and can live quite a long time. Where to get them? Now it is very easy to buy Artemia eggs, both on a bird and from friends and online. What you want is undecapsulated brine shrimp eggs. There are a huge number of opinions on how to properly obtain brine shrimp nauplii.

The easiest is to pour about two teaspoons of salt into a liter jar, a couple of spoons of nauplii and turn on aeration. Keep in mind that it should be around the clock and the bubbles should not be too large, as they will raise the newly hatched brine shrimp to the surface of the water, where it will instantly die.

An important point is the temperature of the water, preferably about 30 C, since at this temperature the nauplii come out in a day and at the same time, and at a lower temperature the yield is stretched.

After about a day, two nauplii will hatch and they can be removed with a siphon and added to the aquarium with fry. Turn off the aeration and the nauplii will collect in the bottom of the jar, and the eggs will float to the top, they need to be removed. A little salty water in the tank won't cause problems, but you can either transplant the nauplii into intermediate fresh water or rinse them out. Malek eats them with pleasure and grows well.

This article describes simple yet effective ways to raise the fry of many fish. It's not always easy, but patience and dedication will always pay off. We hope that we could help you with this!