wrote in message
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Tony said: "......... attempt to breed guppies"

Believe me, you do not need to try! Most people "attempt" to stop them!

You really don't need to worry about places for them to hide, in fact in
my
experience it is better to have a fairly bare tank. The problem is that
they
WILL breed, the fry WILL grow and they WILL breed again which is not
desirable as the fry of the fry will be inbred with all of

According to my exotic aquarium fishes book inbreeding is never a problem
with livebearers unless it is taken to extremes. The original poster could
take the resulting guppies (offspring) to the pet store for credit or
(maybe) money or for free. I myself have taken mine to the lfs for free and
occasionally for store credit. I love my guppies and you are right about
them breeding easy! They are beautiful fish. The way I see it the original
poster can do 3 things about overpopulation; 1: Take the "mass" of resulting
guppies to the lfs for credit, etc., once in a while or; 2: separate the
sexes in separate tanks or; 3: let nature take it's course ( I've done that
as well - all that it entails is keeping good care of the guppies at all
times and if the bioload for the tank gets too high the weaker fish (females
having just given birth has been my experience) die off on their own,
sometimes surprisingly often and without signs of disease). Option 3 is very
controversial as the deaths are possibly painful for the fish
(ammonia/nitrate poisoning I guess) and I only have done that when I didn't
have a ride to the lfs which is around 20 miles away one way. I'd recommend
pygmy chain amazon swordplant (not the big standard plant) for ground cover
for the fry (real plants I am sure is what you are looking for), I don't
know what floating plants would be good (hyacinth? Not much for the fry to
take cover in) but someone here in this appropriate newsgroup should have
plenty of suggestions. Good luck, Later!

the problems that
entails. You need to allow the fry to grow for a while, just until you can
pick the males from the females and SEPERATE them into different tanks
(hence the bare tank to help you getting them out!). You then need to find
either a market for them or a number of very large tanks! Quite honestly,
the initial interest and excitement of breeding guppies soon diminished in
my case when I ended up with so many fish and so many tanks in so short a
time!

I don't intend to put you off but just to warn you that if you want to do
this you need to plan ahead!

Good luck

Mark