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Not a betta, maybe a guppy?

2K views 70 replies 10 participants last post by  Sakura8 
#1 ·
A fry? I think was scooped up with my stepmoms goldfish, they threw it all in the pond she is working on but this thing is TINY. I took my net and netted it out, its tail is nipped and its TINY and clear, a guppy fry maybe? Anyone know? I put it in nice water and a bit of aquarium salt and i dont know what it is/needs fully so i put a sponge filter/airater in a 1gal just in case. Otherwise itd be fishfood tonight, which i think was its purpose anyways being in a big fishes tank? Heres the best pic i could get, its not doing well, nipped tail, a couple of small red dots on its head, its just sittin still breathing....
 
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#2 ·
Its starting to swim now, nipped fin, but still okay, not sure what the two tiny red dots on its back are, its hard to see things well with such a tiny thing. Anyone got guppies that can confirm this is a guppy? I have no idea how to take care of it, but it was getting bullied in that pond and i pitied it >.< Reminds me of a minnow lol.
Heres a quick vid, guppy fry? minnow? XD
http://s165.photobucket.com/albums/u43/punkiiiiiii/?action=view&current=P1140701.mp4
once i know what it is i can figure out what to do :p
 
#3 ·
Could be a minnow? Don't know too much on them.
If it were a guppy it would be a female. The tail looks purple and sort've looks like a guppy female tail. What I don't get is the body being long and there being no gravid spot. I wouldn't lean towards guppy.
Where did she get the fish from?
 
#4 ·
She had some goldfish scooped out at petsmart yesterday, today they mentioned it so i went to see her new pond, it had filled with algae but i caught sight of this thing, she said there were quite a few swimming with the goldfish and i thought it looked a bit like a guppy so i scooped it out out of pity. Whatever it is it was very see though, its starting to get a bit of a "shimmer" to its body now but still pretty see though. I tried crushing up a flake but it isnt showing interest in anything. She sort of just threw it in, i acclimated it to clean spring water and aquarium salt but have no idea what it is lol I just pitied it being chased. Its about a cm long maybe and transparent, its face looks like a guppy from what im seeing but it doesnt have that fat belly i keep seeing on guppy fry. I didnt want to show up at a guppy forum and find out i have a minnow :)) I threw a single mosquito larvae in but it is just letting it swim around, i think it actually may be too small to eat that even. Hm...
Thanks for the response though. :)
 
#5 ·
Looks like a guppy to me, it has the same body shape. She may not have a gravid spot because she's too young to be pregnant or didn't get a chance to mate before she ended up in the pond. Minnows are torpedo or tube shaped because they are related to tetras.
Guppy female (full-grown)

White Cloud Mountain Minnow

You can see minnows have a body shape that is more or less straight and the tail melds seamlessly into th body. Guppies, even males, have that funny rectangular tail attached to a kind of square body.
 
#6 ·
Ah! Thank you for the pictures, my google images is being stupid and wont load images. Def not a minnow. Now i need to see what they need, i luckily came across a 10 gallon tank my neighbor threw out yesterday, maybe i can run out and grab a couple more swimming with the goldfish at petsmart if they havent been killed. They look so odd though, im used to seeing bettas XD
 
#7 ·
Does she swim at the surface a lot? Guppies are midlevel to surface swimmers and when they say surface, they mean it. Guppies practically have their dorsals sticking out of the water like sharks sometimes. She's such a cute little thing, so tiny. If she's too small for pellets or regular food, try crushing up flakes into a powder for her. Good ol TetraMin or TetraColor work fine.
 
#8 ·
At first she sat at the bottom, i thought she was going to die but now shes either at the top or at the middle, unless i come up then she swims down behind a leaf. No interest in food though, i worry since its a fry that it has much less time to go without eating before dying. Ill try again in the morning. I luckily have tons of tropical fish flakes i can crush since the bettas use pellets and the tanks come with samples. We'll see if she makes it through the night.
Yeah oddly cute lol Just so so tiny, hard to spot unless you REALLY look for her, her transparency doesnt help things. I have a bubbler on low in 1 gallon for her tonight, if she survives a week or so ill think of something else. Id like to fully fishless cycle a 10 gallon though, my current 10g is cycling with my two bettas and frequent water changes. Im guessing guppies like friends, total opposite of what im used to. Ive only ever been into bettas XD
 
#9 ·
:lol: I know, I tried guppies briefly a week ago. They spent so much time at the surface and dashing around like crazy I thought they were all about to die because in bettas, that's what that behavior means! Unfortunately, my guppies from Petsmart turned out to have worms so I had to return them (didn't want to risk infecting my bettas). I felt bad about it. But yup, guppies love friends. Maybe wait until she's just a bit bigger, though, before getting her pals. Guppies do eat their own fry. Do you have any frozen daphnia or brine shrimp? A lot of fry are fed daphnia or newly hatched brine shrimp, so maybe she'll eat that.
 
#10 ·
I dont have any brine shrimp but i have one of those "sea monkey" kits i bought ot play with, i think those are brine shrimp but im not positive and not positive they would be safe. Im mostely only stocked for bettas, this was just such a surprise pity thing. Maybe tomorrow i can go hunting, weve had alot of rain these past few days, maybe theres some smaller mosquito larvae out there that she could fit into her mouth. By the time i got home with her it was dark and i had a few larvae in a bowl outside but they are pretty big. Apparently petsmart puts the fry with goldfish, maybe guppies just breed so often that they use fry as fishfood, hopefully it wasnt a culled fry that happened to get away, i dont see any deformitys, but yeah its face makes me giggle, the position of its eyes are really far apart and huge XD Like its so shocked at everything :p
 
#11 ·
One mating can produce several groups of spawn and females can start spawning around a month old, so yeah, guppies are pretty prolific. :roll: I keep watching the video - she swims along pretty well for her size, doesn't she? Maybe the larva could be mashed up if necessary, although that does sound kinda gross. :sick: I hope she starts eating though, she seems too spunky to go down just because she won't eat. Haha, and after what she's been through, she probably IS shocked at everything. "Where am I now? What happened to me?"
 
#12 ·
I'm extremely certain it's a guppy. About how big is it?

I use to breed guppies, mollies, and platies. Guppies all look the same when they are fry, and get their coloring later. If it is a guppy, don't put it with bettas. Guppies are extremely slow moving and are easy targets for bettas. I've seen a betta swing a guppy around by the tail, after tearing another's tail to shreds and killing it. :(

Guppies go well with almost any tropical community fish, however I don't recommend tetras other than Neons. Wait before you go and get it tank mates. It needs to grow up first, otherwise it will become a snack, unless you have dense plant and ornament coverage, but then you run into a problem with feeding it, because coming to the surface can mean the end.

At my PetSmart we have fry food. I forget the brand, but it's called something along the lines of "First bites." It's in either a yellow or white package. I want to say it's by Hikari, but don't hold me to it. Or, you can feed it a little bit of Sally's Frozen Brine Shrimp. I fed all of my fry this. Bettas and other tropical fish gobble it up too, but it can be messy, so be extremely careful. If taken care of properly, guppies can become full grown in a little over a month.

PetSmart only mixes minnows with their feeder goldfish, which kinda makes me want to say it's not a guppy, but it's extremely possible that a baby guppy could have gone through the filtration system into the goldfish tanks. We keep a "maternity ward" tank at our store where we place all fry. Sometimes they end up in other tanks. We just move them back. Snails are the worst about this.
 
#13 ·
She seems like she is swimming hard to get around, putting alot of strength into it then hanging in the middle. Her back tail is half ripped though, like the corner is gone, so i thought maybe she had to push harder to get around. No longer panting though. She actually just swam up to her sponged airhose and checked it out against the current. Shes still got some life left in her. I need a magnifying glass though, i want to see all the details of her, finding her top fins took awhile, and finding the bottoms is a rare glimpse, i want to check them out XD
 
#16 ·
Shes about a cm long, transparent, and makes a 2 day old mosquito larvae look way to large to eat. She gets around but seemed slow, i wasnt sure if that was normal, but she tries hard. Yeah id say shes about 1/10th of my bettas size, definitely would be fish food in seconds for them. Right now shes in a 1gallon kritter keeper with a sponge filter/airhose. I couldnt find any of the others in the pond so shes alone with minor damage.
 
#17 ·
lol yeah shes a baby girl? i guess :)) If she survives a bit longer ill have to think up a name, ive seen those first bites at petsmart, if tomorrow mornings feeding try fails i will try and make a trip up there.
Maybe ill make an offtopic thread and update on her. Im comfy in this betta forum, i dont wanna make new friends in another area *whines* lol
 
#18 ·
I just looked at my ruler - she's so TINY! I bet you could keep her in a cereal bowl and still lose her in there. Maybe they all look like it's hard to get around at that size, plus if her fins are a bit torn, she might have to put in extra effort. Once there were live fry in the mollie tank at one of my local pet stores but they looked like they were older than this girl, by the sounds of it. And who knows, maybe she's a he?
 
#20 ·
That'll be okay for now, but you want to get it in a aquarium soon. Guppies are tropical so they need their water maintained similar to bettas. Luckily, guppies are so small when fully grown that you can keep them in >10g, unlike most tropicals, so if you don't want to go all out with a 10g you can get less.

I've never heard of feeding them mosquito larve, or Sea Monkeys. From what I know, Sea Monkeys are a form of brine shrimp. So, that's your call.

As far as her injuries, she should be okay. I keep saying she, but I don't know the prime age for sexing guppies. I just waited for mine to get color. Males get really bold and beautiful and the females stay kind bland, sorta like bettas. :)

Sakura; My store doesn't give free samples, ever. So sad. :(
 
#21 ·
Could be. Yeah from what ive been reading shes probably less then a month old. I think Coet might be right, it found its way into the wrong tank through filtration lol. In 1 gallon im squinting and turning lights on and mostely just seeing her eyes then making out the rest of her, the video and camera seem to catch a shimmer the eye cant see so im getting my best view of her by zooming in on a pic lol
 
#22 ·
Poor thing. It can't be more than a few days old. Guppies barely get an inch long when they are fully grown. Tiny little things. I love them.
 
#24 ·
I have a 3 gallon i just emptied and storaged because i JUST bought my bettas a 10 gallon, but my neighbor threw one out the next day coincidentally. Im not so sure i want a huge tank of guppies, but i dont want her to be lonely either.
 
#29 ·
A three gallon would be fine for her and a few tank mates. If you don't want more guppies though, make sure you sex her properly when the time comes, and don't add the opposite. Guppies and livebearers and will kick out babies once a month.

Guppies are pretty hardy fish. As long as she has it easy for a little while she should be okay. :]
 
#26 ·
Ill refer to it as a her until i see different lol, it feels right for now since its so small and dull XD Wow, a few days huh. They must be hardier then Bettas fry, shes been put with goldfish, scooped, bagged, then threw into a pond filled with bug larvae, algae and more goldfish, then scooped out and acclimated to spring water in just 2 days!
 
#28 ·
lol Its too bad, itd be quite a lucky fish, saved so many times :))
I wonder if two in a 3 gallon would work or 3 in a 5 gallon, i think i could manage that. The 10 my neighbor threw out i dont have plans for exactly yet, just keeping it in case i ever have more room.
edit/ Ah answered that question :))
 
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