Guppy Breeding?

[d_virginiana]

I usually avoid any sort of live feeder fish unless it is a last resort due to the parasite risk, but I was wondering... If I bred my own guppies, and treated the first generation with antifungal/antiparasitic fish meds, those would be safe feeders?

I've been looking at getting an African clawed frog, which got me thinking of healthy prey items for it. Then I started thinking it'd be really nice if I had a litter of babies not to have to worry about the icky things that hitch rides on pet store guppies every time one was a finicky eater. This is still a half-formed idea at the moment since I have neither the money nor time to set it up, but I'm thinking I might be able to get it up and running by summer.
What do you guys think? Anyone else tried something like this?

[Steveo]

I tried breeding guppies in a 30 gallon tank. I gave it about 6 months and it was never really productive enough for more than a meal per month. Given the capital costs and required labor, buying a pack of silversides every month was much less expensive. The value of my labor on that tank was well under a dollar per hour.

[i_heart_sneakie_snakes]

I breed my own guppies for my snakes. I have a baby and an adult tank. It is an absolute pain in the butt and I am thinking of stopping once I get my last two guppy eaters onto pinkies. Like Steve said, not cost effective and tons of work.

[joeyjoe9876]

You'd be better off breeding mice if your garters accept them.

[thamneil]

You'll never produce enough to use as a large amount of the diet. I'd recommend just buying what you need. Less hassle and work.

[kimbosaur]

I think she meant that the guppies would be good to have on hand if there was a picky eater, not to use as a steady food source.

You'd probably only need to treat for internal parasites. If you really wanted to, maybe use some methylene blue for fungus as a precaution. To cover all possible external infections would take a lot of meds and could cause more harm than good.

[d_virginiana]

I think she meant that the guppies would be good to have on hand if there was a picky eater, not to use as a steady food source.

You'd probably only need to treat for internal parasites. If you really wanted to, maybe use some methylene blue for fungus as a precaution. To cover all possible external infections would take a lot of meds and could cause more harm than good.

Yeah, I meant as something I could use the young guppies for scrubs that were difficult eaters, and then just let the adults swim around and do their thing when I didn't have a snake litter.

I'm mainly basing this off the fuzzy memories of the fancy guppies I kept as a kid. They reproduced all the time without much maintenance and we ended up just culling most of the babies. But if I do end up breeding Harley this year, I don't want to have to feed petstore guppies. They're known as the kiss of death for fish tanks because most of them are imported and they carry crazy diseases. Plus, for baby garters I'd probably be looking to feed young or subadult guppies anyway, so my adults would stay in the tank to continue adding to the population.

btw, any difference nutritionally between fancy guppies and regulars? Just curious.

[Ruth]

Can you feed mollies or platys? if so they breed fast , faster than guppies and grow bigger so you would have a choice of size from baby to adult. I used to keep them and had to introduce predatory fish to control the numbers. I would imagine disease wise you would be fine after a good quarantine but I don't know.

[Selkielass]

30 gal hex tank of fancy guppies provides color in the like living room and treats for the smaller snakes. Definitely not cost effective, but the guppies are fun to watch.
Fancy guppies get larger, but some strains are pretty delicate. Mine are mutts crossed from several different fancy strains. The least colorful become feeders

[Light of Dae]

Cherry Shrimp eat all sorts of nasty stuff in a fish tank, mainly they eat the parasite eggs when they are released so it ends the cycle. Id get a tank of guppies, Platys and cherry shrimp.

[Selkielass]

Do cherry shrimp tolerate warm and deep water better than ghost/glass shrimp?
I haze a nice colony of ghost shrimp in my 10 gallon tank with my betta, but they don't do well in the deeper and warmer water of the 30 hex guppy set up. (Warmer water, more pressure and less light at the bottom)
The fancier shrimp are so much more expensive than the feeder shrimp that I've hesitated on trying to keep them.

[Sonya610]

I have thought about raising Mollies as feeders (thought about it a bunch of times and then kept thinking I would best off not doing it).

I am thinking about it again and quietly pricing used tank setups on craigslist. I heard mollies breed much faster than guppies and grow larger. Like Virginiana said, the idea is to treat the first generation for parasites and then produce healthy feeders as a treat every 2-3 weeks.

Mine are fine on pinkies and trout but the one time they got minnows they went nuts for them.

Would feeding them live fish put them off their other food?
Do people think it is cruel to feed live?
Anyone know the best way to de-worm the fish? Am I only worried about worms or other things too?

[-MARWOLAETH-]

I'm thinking about starting a tank of live bearers and culling some when I've got too many.

What would be the most humane way to euthanize a fish?

[d_virginiana]

What would be the most humane way to euthanize a fish?

Put them in a separate container that is NEVER used for ANYTHING else living, and add a few drops of clove oil. It's the quickest way to euthanize a healthy fish.
Just make sure the container never even touches water that goes to any other reptile/amphibian/fish, as even a small amount can be fatal.

Clove oil can be found in most Asian markets or ordered online, but it's not very common in a lot of regular grocery stores.

[-MARWOLAETH-]

Would that still make them safe to fed off?

[chris-uk]

I'm thinking about starting a tank of live bearers and culling some when I've got too many.

What would be the most humane way to euthanize a fish?

Number 11 scalpel, sever the spine at the base of the skull, then pith the brain (insert the point of the scalpel and wiggle it). Destroys the brain which makes it quick and painless. There's some argument that decapitation allows pain to be felt in the head, so destroying the brain is my preferred method.
I've read about oil of cloves, but I thought you needed to increase the dose gradually to stupify the fish before upping the dose to a fatal level. I wouldn't feed fish euthanised in this way to my snakes, but I have no evidence it would be harmful.

[d_virginiana]

Oh, I thought you just meant to make more space, not to freeze and feed later. No, don't feed anything with clove oil to anything else. It is definitely fatal to other fish and amphibians, even in small doses. I haven't seen any info on how it works for snakes, but I definitely wouldn't risk it.

When all I could get for Houdini were live minnows, I would do what Chris said. Quick and painless

[Sonya610]

Well y'all have successfully discouraged me from raising live fish yet again! My biggest fear is that I would feel guilty everytime I looked at the fish (thinking about how they would be eaten and possibly die a slow death inside the snakes).

Idea has been abandoned. Plus I know it would be a heck of a lot of work.

[chris-uk]

Plus I know it would be a heck of a lot of work.

As a "keeper of water" (you don't so much keep the fish, you keep the water right and the fish take care of themselves) I concur about the work required to raise feeder fish in good conditions.
I don't keep guppies, but the amount of effort it takes to keep my community tank ticking over would discourage me from setting up my spare tank to breed feeders. When all my snakes eat frozen and I can buy a kilo of frozen smelt for £4 (OK, the shipping adds a bit on top of that) I'll take the frozen smelt route.

[Steveo]

The $8.95 I pay for a package of silversides seems like a great deal after ~6 months of raising guppies. The guppies were more work than the snakes. I had a filter and a heater fail on me. If my garters were permanently babies it might have been sustainable but they kept growing and getting hungrier and the guppy output couldn't keep up.

The sale RodentPro had a few weeks ago with rat pinks for 29 cents was an even better deal. $29 for 100 and I should get about 30 weeks out of the bag. $29 in silversides would get me about half that. I'm not including shipping in the calculation because I was placing an order for my constrictors anyway so it only added a couple dollars.

[-MARWOLAETH-]

a kilo of frozen smelt for £4 (OK, the shipping adds a bit on top of that) I'll take the frozen smelt route. How much was the P&P for the Kiezebrink smelt and how long would it last one snake?

[CrazyHedgehog]

I have 3 tanks of guppys, pretty in the rooms, but only feed to young sans that are picky eaters...but they breed quite a few, it just takes months for them to grow to eating size! a pain in the but really, good as a last resort for picky babies, but not an ideal solution for full time feeding.

[chris-uk]

How much was the P&P for the Kiezebrink smelt and how long would it last one snake?

I bought 1kg and 500 pinkies in January for about £70 (Inc the postage). I've still got about a quarter bag of smelt and at least half the pinkies. That's feeding 13 (or 11 if you take off the non-eating blacknecks). An order like that would last you a year for just your one checkered. I'm tempted to just order 4 or 5kg of smelt when I run out, the postage of £18 would make it a hell of a lot cheaper than buying the smelt locally.