Fancy Guppy Care Guide - Aquarium Setup, Feeding & Breeding

Fancy Guppies are small, colourful livebearers famed for their extravagant tails and broad range of selectively bred patterns. Their finnage may be rounded, delta-shaped, veil-like or dramatically flowing, with colours including red, blue, yellow, orange, black, metallic and multicoloured combinations.

They are active, peaceful fish that spend much of their time in the middle and upper levels of the aquarium. Males often display to one another and to females by spreading their fins and turning in the light, creating constant movement in a planted community tank.

In the wild, guppies inhabit shallow streams, drainage channels, pools and gently flowing waterways. They are adaptable fish that can tolerate a variety of conditions, which has helped them become established in many tropical regions beyond their native range.

Fancy Guppies are not a separate wild species but cultivated forms of Poecilia reticulata. Decades of selective breeding have produced an enormous variety of tail shapes, colours and body markings, although some highly elaborate strains can be more delicate than their wild-type relatives.

Poecilia reticulata is native to northern South America, including parts of Venezuela, Guyana and northern Brazil, as well as Trinidad and nearby islands. The fancy varieties sold in aquariums are selectively bred strains developed from these wild guppies and are now distributed worldwide.

A group of Fancy Guppies should have at least a 40-litre aquarium, although 60 litres or more is preferable for a mixed-sex group and its future fry. A tank around 60 × 30 × 30 cm provides a useful minimum footprint, with a secure lid because guppies can jump. Use gentle to moderate filtration, open swimming space, and dense live plants such as Java moss, guppy grass or hornwort for cover. Fine gravel or sand is suitable, and floating plants can help young fish feel secure without blocking the surface.

Male Fancy Guppies usually reach about 3–4 cm (1.2–1.6 in), while females are larger at approximately 5–6 cm (2.0–2.4 in). Exceptional selectively bred females may approach 7 cm (2.8 in), excluding the effect of particularly long fins.

Fancy Guppies are omnivores and do best on a varied diet of quality tropical flakes or small granules supplemented with baby brine shrimp, daphnia, mosquito larvae and other appropriately sized frozen or live foods. Spirulina-based foods and finely chopped blanched vegetables can provide useful plant matter. Feed small portions that they finish quickly, rather than allowing food to accumulate.

Fancy Guppies suit peaceful community aquariums and can be kept with small tetras, rasboras, corydoras, peaceful small catfish, kuhli loaches, platies and other calm livebearers. Avoid tiger barbs, serpae tetras and other fin-nippers, as well as large cichlids, predatory fish and species likely to eat their flowing tails or young. Keep several females for each male, since males may repeatedly pursue females when the sexes are mixed.

Fancy Guppies are prolific livebearers and usually breed readily in a mature aquarium. Keep a ratio of one male to two or three females to reduce persistent attention on individual females. After internal fertilisation, a female gives birth to around 20–60 free-swimming fry after roughly 21–30 days, although larger females may produce more. Dense plants or a breeding box can provide cover for the young, which should be offered finely powdered food or baby brine shrimp once they are free-swimming.

Fancy Guppies are strongly sexually dimorphic. Males are smaller and more brightly coloured, with enlarged ornamental tails and a narrow gonopodium, while females are larger-bodied, generally less vivid and have a rounded abdomen; a gravid spot is often visible near the anal region.