User:Mojo2go1/How to tell if a guppy is pregnant

Guppy Anatomy and Pregnance Information:

How to tell if your Guppy is Pregnant: Your female guppy that is pregnant will have a dark spot under her tail. This spot will get larger and darker and these are he babies starting to form. You will see her get larger and larger. If you notice what looks like a little bit of white string coming from this area, she most likely just dropped a baby. Once you have a pregnant female I would suggest scooping her up in an isolation or breeder tank and placing it on the side of the aquarium. If these females get too stressed out they will be pregnant forever, until they eventually die. You cannot move the fish in a net or place it in a completely different aquarium because this will also stress her out.

How often Guppies get Pregnant: Guppies get pregnant once every 30 days. This means if you have 3 female guppies in your aquarium and one male guppy you will have a batch of babies at least once every couple of weeks. Guppies can have anywhere from one baby all the way up to hundreds of babies at one time. If you don't already know, female guppies do not have color on their bodies, only their tails. Males will be the most colorful and they will have color on their bodies. If your guppy doesn't have any color and it's very small it's probably a wild guppy which is used as feeder fish.

How to help the the Guppy give birth if the Fry are not born: After 30 days the babies are not born you can help her out. Possibly, it might rain or snow on that day and this will cause her to have her babies. My females would always produce babies on days that it was snowing or raining. You can also raise the temperature up to about 78 degrees, slowly, about 2 degrees per day until they have their babies. Once they have the babies in the breeder compartment they will drop down below so that the female doesn't eat them. Females will eat their babies, so if you want to keep them you will have to put them in a breeder tank when they are inside of the female.

What are the symptoms of delivery? The most noticeable thing the females do which I spot immediately, is they refuse to eat. This is MY indication the females will be delivering soon. If you watch them daily at feeding times, you should be able to notice which fish isn't eating. Then you know the babies will soon be delivered. Although some females may take in food, which appears they are eating, but keep watching to be certain they don't spit the food out of their mouths.

Other symptoms are: Brilliant, vibrant, colors in the female, or pacing up and down the sides of the tank. Hiding near a heater or in plants. Perhaps even sitting on the bottom. A female may even have her head pointed down and tail pointed up in attempts to deliver. The belly of the female will become "squared", meaning as the birthing canal drops into place it will have a protrusion from the gravid spot giving the appearance her belly has squared off. Often times, when delivery is near, the female will be having difficulties swimming due the weight of the developing fry. I don't always notice this problem, but it should be something you watch for on a daily basis.

How long should delivery last? Delivery time actually depends on many environmental factors. On average the fry are delivered in 4-6 hours. If delivery is difficult, it could take up to 12 hours to deliver all the fry. It also isn't uncommon for a stressed female to release a couple fry one day, then stop delivery. Perhaps then a week later she will complete delivering all her fry.

How many fry should you expect? First delivers for a young mother, on average are between 8 and 25 fry. Subsequent delivers can range from 25 to 50 fry. As the female matures, the batch of fry can range from 40 to 100 in healthy females. This is why they are termed the million's fish.

Anatomy: The guppy is one of the smaller of the infinitely varied species of the great fish family. It lives in tropical warm water, can stand brackish water, and as we have seen, it is a member of the smaller pike family. The color of the guppy is due to color spots, microscopic in size, called melanophores, located in the skin. The number and arrangement of these color areas is what gives great variation among all but the most inbred specimens. Outwardly, the fish we see takes its form from the supporting skeleton. The vertebral column runs from its head to its tail and is made up of many separate tiny perforated bones called vertebrae. The head at its anterior end contains the brain case or cranium. The upper and lower jaws are formed of bones. Ribs are attached to the vertebrae and protect many of the vital organs just as they do in ourselves. Fins project from the body at various points. There are also a hip or pelvic girdle and a shoulder girdle which help support the fins. A bony plate called an operculum, one on each side, covers the gills. The dorsal fin of the guppy is often the fish's crowning glory, standing as it does straight up from the ridgepole formed by the backbone, or lying supinely, and often extending, especially in exotic specimens, past the end of the tail. The pair of triangular fins at the sides are called pectoral fins, the tail is the caudal fin, the fins along the underside of the body are named for their positions. Thus we find the ventral pair called pelvic fins, and the single anal fin which contains double fin rays, joined so closely as to appear single. Fins are supported by two kinds of fin rays. One is hard and unbranched, the other is soft and branched, with segments. Swimming is accomplished almost entirely by the movement of the fish's tail which propels by making a sort of figure eight. All the other fins help in guiding, elevating and descending. Watch any guppy and you will see he guides himself chiefly in a certain direction simply by turning his body.