Guppy

Poecilia reticulata

General information: Guppies are one of the best known small fish used as an aquarium species. They have been bred into many different shapes and colours. Guppies live for a year with males growing to about 35 mm and females growing up to 60 mm. Guppies live in a wide range of water qualities with some living in brackish estuaries but generally freshwater is the preferred habitat. The water quality ranges for these fish are temperature between 19 and 29 deg C, a pH between 7.0 and 8.5, a general hardness between 200 ppm and 300 ppm is preferred but they can live in softer water, an alkalinity between 80 and 150 ppm. They will eat most aquarium shop prepared foods, flake and freeze dried insects, also aquaculture crumble, however all aquarium fish do better with twice weekly feeds of live foods such as mosquito wrigglers or small crustaceans like cyclops or daphnia. Guppies are live bearing and will breed without much extra work to induce spawning. The fry are quite large and will be able to eat prepared foods crushed and ground to dust in a mortar and pestle. Frequent feeding of brine shrimp napauli will get the youngsters off to a good start in life. The guppies in the photos are devolved by mother nature and are much more hardy than the fancy varieties. You could call them feral NT Guppies that have spilled into the local waterways from someones pond and the local gudgeons, grunters other small predators have removed the slow swimmers and weaker specimens, they are starting to look like the wild guppies from Central and South America.

Distribution : Guppies are native to Central and South America but have been spread over the entire globe to every continent except Antarctica. They have been introduced for mosquito control and accidentally released from aquaria and ponds. These introductions generally have a negative impact on local fish populations. Around the top end of the Northern Territory they are usualy sold to pond keepers as mosquito control then during the wet season the pond overflows into local drains and creeks. They have been reported in natural places like the Howard River but generally dont survive where there is a full range of local predators. However there are several populations around Darwin that are well established despite several attempts by the Fisheries Pest managent section to remove them.

Selling details : Sold as individual fish

Reference: Allen, Midgley and Allen 2002 "Field Guide to the Freshwater Fishes of Australia" , ANGFA database - http://db.angfa.org.au/