How to Keep Guppies? Detailed Guide to Care Methods and Tips

Guppies have a very strong ability to adapt to water pH and are highly tolerant of low temperatures. They can grow and reproduce normally in aquatic environments with a pH between 6.3 and 7.8 and a water temperature of around 18°C, and can still survive when the water temperature drops to as low as 13°C. This gives people the illusion that they are easy to keep, but in fact naturalized guppies are quite delicate, with extremely low disease resistance and ability to withstand sudden changes in water quality.

How to keep guppies?

So how should guppies be kept? First, let us look at water quality: guppies belong to the ovoviviparous killifish family, originating from small lakes along the coast and coastal islands of South America as well as slow-flowing waters. Their living environment is similar to that of other ovoviviparous fish such as mollies. The suitable water quality is weakly alkaline, that is, an aquatic environment with a pH between 7 and 7.3 and a DH value of around 8 to 9. However, because guppies are highly adaptable, you do not need to consider this issue when keeping them in a mixed tank or when you want to set up a planted tank. But if you want to breed good varieties, it is best to keep them separately. Guppies react very strongly to medications and chlorine. Residual chlorine in the water is the main culprit causing massive sudden death of guppies, so the water used for keeping guppies must be fully aged by exposure to air.

When keeping guppies, note that because guppy lines and varieties are numerous and complex, mixing male and female guppies of different lines together can easily cause confusion in breeding. Therefore, in order to obtain pure offspring, when keeping guppies you should isolate and keep different varieties of guppies according to breeding requirements. Specifically, there are two methods as follows.

Mixed keeping of males and females of the same variety

That is, keeping multiple male and female guppies of the same variety together in one aquarium and letting them mate freely to reproduce. Note that different varieties should not be kept together to avoid impure offspring lines (unless, of course, you are trying to create a new variety).

Separate keeping of males and females of different varieties

That is, separately keeping males of different varieties together on one side and females together on the other side, and when breeding, selecting suitable male and female fish to be placed together in a tank, so as to avoid excessive mating causing harm to the parent fish and to maintain pure offspring lines.

From the upward-facing mouth of guppies, it can be seen that they are upper-water-layer fish that eat floating food. They are omnivorous and can be fed all kinds of fish food. Water fleas, tubifex worms, brine shrimp, bloodworms, breadworms, vegetables, hamburger (even newly born baby guppies) and so on can all be fed. Just be careful to disinfect and avoid polluting the water quality.