Differences Between Guppies and Anchovies: Breeding, Fry Count, and Reproduction Cycle

As one of the most common tropical fish, guppies not only have an outstanding body shape and super brilliant body colors, but are also very cheap, so they are favored and loved by a large number of fish-keeping enthusiasts. It is said that many breeding experts started out keeping guppies. So, are guppies the same as anchovies? How do you keep them? How many fry do they give birth to at one time? How often do they reproduce?

If both guppies and anchovies refer to ornamental fish, then anchovy is also a common name for the guppy, an ornamental fish of the family Poeciliidae native to South America, so the two are the same and refer to the same kind of fish. Guppy is just its scientific name.

If it refers to something else, then the anchovy is commonly known as “zi ji”, with the scientific name “Coilia mystus”. It belongs to a valuable economic fish species. It is a famous specialty of Wenzhou and an excellent accompaniment to rice and wine. Because its tail is forked and shaped like a phoenix's tail, short and red, pointed, thin, narrow and long, just like a phoenix tail, it is called the anchovy. The anchovy is a small migratory fish that usually inhabits the open sea. From late spring to early summer each year, it moves in schools from the sea into rivers and makes a spawning migration back to the freshwater entrance in the middle and lower reaches.

How to Keep Guppies

1. Water temperature

As everyone knows, when keeping fish you first cultivate the water, and cultivating the water is the key and foundation of fish keeping. So what are the water temperature requirements for guppies? Guppies have fairly strong adaptability, so their demands on water are not very high. They can usually live in water at 18-24 degrees C. Under normal circumstances, indoor room temperature can meet their water temperature requirements, but in winter it is still best to use a heater, and it is best to keep the water temperature at around 22 degrees C. It does not matter if it is a little higher, as this will promote the guppies' activity level and can also strengthen their bodily resistance.

2. Bait

Speaking of guppy bait, it can be roughly divided into two kinds: one is artificial feed sold on the market, and the other is live bait. There are many kinds of artificial feed sold on the market, divided into three types: flake feed, pellet feed, and frozen feed. However, this kind of feed involves safety issues, so regarding bait it is best to recommend choosing live bait first. So what are the best and safest live baits?

The best live bait is first and foremost tubifex worms. On the one hand, tubifex worms have very high nutritional value and can survive for a long time, and they will encourage the guppies not to feed, thereby strengthening the guppies' growth rate; on the other hand, tubifex worms can also be used as medicated bait. Feed the medicine to the tubifex worms first so they become a medicinal carrier, and then give them to the guppies to eat, and the effect is quite good. So tubifex worms should be the most perfect feed. However, fish keepers must pay special attention to one point: because tubifex worms live in the wild, even though aquarium shops will sterilize and disinfect them, some parasites may still remain in their bodies, so fish keepers had best process them before feeding.

Next is brine shrimp (nauplii). It should be specially noted here that hatching brine shrimp eggs does not require much time or many procedures, but after hatching, they should be fed as soon as possible, otherwise their nutritional value will be slightly reduced. But if there are extra hatched brine shrimp, they can be frozen, and next time when you want to feed them, you only need to thaw them and they can be used.

3. Feeding

For feeding newborn guppy fry, it is not recommended to put in too much bait, to avoid the small fish not finishing it and polluting the water quality. Usually, before the sex of the guppies can be distinguished, feed as much high-protein food as possible, but after the male and female fish can be kept separately, remember not to let the male fish eat too much high-protein food. The female fish can be fed as much as possible to make her body shape fuller. But fish keepers should be reminded that if the feeding amount increases, the frequency of water changes should increase, to avoid the water quality deteriorating too quickly, causing disease to breed and harm the guppies.

For adult guppies, they will like every kind of feed, but do not feed the same kind of feed fixedly over the long term, to avoid causing single, unbalanced nutrition that affects the guppies' growth rate. In addition, feed some live bait often to strengthen the guppies' nutrition.

How Many Fry Guppies Give Birth to at One Time

The first litter ranges from several to dozens, and is generally finished within one day. After the female fish gives birth, she must be scooped out. Guppies have the habit of eating small fish. After the second litter, there can be more than 100.

How Often Guppies Reproduce

Generally speaking, guppies that have reached sexual maturity will reproduce once every month or three times every two months.

Guppies can enter the sexually mature stage 3-5 months after birth, at which point the guppies have the ability to reproduce the next generation. Under normal circumstances, the lifespan of a guppy is only about a year or so. Of course, there are also ideal survival states of 2-3 years, but such “long-lived” guppies are extremely rare. Therefore, for ordinary guppies, from a physiological perspective, guppies older than 6 months are no longer suitable for reproduction.