Breeding livebearers in your tropical fish tank is very easy. Guppies and Swordtails are very popular tropical fish for beginners and easy to breed. They are both livebearers, that is they do not lay eggs but bear their young live. From conception to birth can be between twenty and forty days with an average of 28 days. If you have both make and female livebearers in your tank they will inevitably mate and produce young as long as they are healthy and the conditions in the tank are good. You can tell if a female guppy is pregnant by the appearance of a 'gravid spot' on her abdomen. This is a dark mark shaped like a triangle that appears close to her anal vent and darkens and enlarges over the course of the pregnancy.

Taking Care of the Young

To prevent the fry from being eaten when they are born you will need to provide a breeder box with a v shaped vent to allow the fry to be separated from the mother immediately after birth. The box can be placed in your main tank and the mother placed in it when birth appears imminent. You can also add some breeding grass to the tank in case birth occurs before you have managed to separate the mother and provides somewhere for the young fry to hide.

Feeding the Fry

The fry can be fed with the same flake food as the adults but crush it first into a fine powder. If possible using live food in the form of tiny brine shrimp is also a good idea although most people cannot provide this regularly. Any left over food should be removed from the bottom of the breeder box before it begins to decay by siphoning out with a piece of tubing. Make sure you do not siphon up any of the tiny fry!

Looking After the Fry

It is a good idea to perform partial water changes at least weekly while you have baby fish in your tank. The fish will be big enough for their own tank in a few weeks or can be kept in the main tank provided you have a divider as they are still too small to be mixed with adult fish. Only after about 8 weeks are they big enough to safely mix with your adult fish unless you have very large fish in the tank. In this case you would probably be best to wait longer.

Conclusion

Breeding livebearers, especially guppies and swordtails, is very easy provided you provide a healthy environment and know how to look after the tiny fry until they are big enough to fend for themselves.

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Once you've purchased your fish tank, filter, pump, decorations and any other accessories and set up the tank it is time to prepare it for your fish by 'cycling it'. What this means is that you need to provide an environment for the bacteria that will keep your tank free of toxic chemicals to grow. Nitrifying bacteria convert toxic ammonia that is excreted by the fish into, firstly nitrites which are also toxic, and then into the much less toxic nitrates.

There are two ways to do this, one is to introduce some hardy fish into the tank which can survive the higher levels of these toxic chemicals until the bacteria grow enough to deal with them. The second way, which is more humane as it does not involve using fish, is called fishless cycling. In this method a culture of bacteria is introduced and ammonia is used to encourage them to grow.

Ammonia is very toxic to fish and can cause damage to their gills. If you use fish to cycle your tank, even though they do survive, they will be damaged and much weaker. We recommend that you use a fishless cycling method which is very easy to do and only introduce fish in the tank once the levels of toxic chemicals fall to zero.

Fishless Cycling Method

The Bacteria Culture

The first thing you need to do is to obtain a culture of nitrifying bacteria. If you have a friend with a fish tank you can take some of the gravel, filter material or even a piece of rock or decoration from their tank which will be loaded with these bacteria. Failing that bacteria cultures such as Hagen’s Cycle (TM) Cycle or StressZyme can be bought in the pet shop. You can then introduce this culture into your tank.

Sources of Ammonia

Now you will need to introduce some ammonia into the tank. You should obtain household ammonia that is 100% pure and free of any perfumes or other additives. If you cannot find ammonia like this in the local supermarket your local pet shop may sell it. If you know a science teacher or someone who works in a lab this could be another source.

The Tank's Temperature

The temperature of the tank needs to be ideal for growth of the nitrifying bacteria and should be between 85 and 95 Fahrenheit (30 to 35 centigrade). Once the tank is cycled the temperature can be reduced to a level that is more suitable for your fish.

Cycling the Tank

Make sure you have plenty of aeration in your tank and also through your filter as bacteria need oxygen to grow. Add your bacteria culture to the tank and then add a small teaspoon of ammonia to a small tank, one and 1/2 teaspoons to a medium tank and 2 teaspoons to a larger tank. After about an hour test the water for ammonia which should be somewhere between 3 and 5 ppm. If it is lower than this add some more ammonia, leave for another hour, then test again. Once the level is correct you can leave the tank for a few days. Now you will need to test the water for the presence of nitrites which the bacteria have produced from the ammonia.

At this point the ammonia level should drop as it is being converted into nitrites. When the ammonia level drops to zero or is very low add the same amount of ammonia that you added in the first place. Continue to monitor both the ammonia and nitrite levels until they drop to zero. Although it is not necessary you can also monitor the nitrate levels as it is interesting to observe them rising as they are produced from the nitrites.

Once the ammonia and nitrites drop to zero your tank is cycled. Now you should do a 60% water change being careful not to disturb the gravel at the bottom of the tank. Do not change the filter material as this now contains the good bacteria. You should now lower the temperature to a level that is right for the fish you will be going to add. Leave the tank alone for two or three hours then recheck it to make sure ammonia and nitrite levels are still zero.

Congratulations! You have now cycled your tank correctly and can now add your fish. Be careful not to overload the tank with fish immediately. It is far better to add the fish over about a month to allow the bacteria to continue to grow and to be able to cope with the maximum number of fish in the tank.

Maintaining Your Tank

Although we won't go into details of maintaining your tank here we will say that you must be careful to preserve the bacteria cultures that you have carefully encouraged to grow. This means that you should never completely change all of the water, only partial water changes are necessary, and never remove and clean all of the decorations and change the filter material at the same time.

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