Re: KillieTalk Digest V5 #362

[Kate Breimayer <kate at munat_com>]

Re: "Well I was looking at buying a trio or so of guppies from petsmart and breeding them in a ten gallon, not purchasing fry from the store. That way, they should be healthy, as long as the all are quarentined first, right?

Chris"

I have to say this is purely anecdotal and non scientific, but it seems like nearly every time I hear a person say "I set up a nice fishtank just like they told me at the pet shop but all the fish died" I find out the last fish added to the nice tank was a guppy or a neon tetra from one of the big box stores. People who have had healthy tanks for years have lost the whole tank to nice looking guppies. I talked to a graduate of Reed College in Portland who did a thesis in genetics using guppies, she ended up spending the whole year trying to figure out how to get guppies that don't die from some highly infectious agent they never identified. I would seriously reconsider mixing guppies with any fish you care about. They don't reproduce quickly enough for the fry to be worth it as a food, either, IMO. I have been through this myself, don't know if it was the neons or guppies in my case but all the fish in two tanks died.  All the fish looked great in the store and in the quaran!
tine tank, it wasn't until the stress of the community tank that the disease manifested. Fortunately I wasn't into fish much at that point and learned my lesson before I had a fishroom to burn through.
On the other hand my golden wonder killies love a good meal of young fresh betta babies. Picscivores apparently can  look totally different on a fish based diet. I can see why you would want to do this, but I would find both a better species to be the source of the feeders, and a better store or breeder to get it from. I have never raised them myself, but I hear white clouds and some rainbowfish are very prolific, and danios can be if you treat them right. Bettas stay small for a very long time and usually produce hundreds more fry than you would possibly want to raise to adulthood so culling them is the norm, especially with the fancy breeds, but with them you have to really watch the parent stock and make sure there is no chance of transmitting velvet. 
Good luck!
Kate B
Oly WA
Kate B
Oly WA



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