Guppies
Guppies are one of the most colorful tropical freshwater fish in the world. They are small, and relatively easy and inexpensive to take care of.
ABOUT
Basic Care Plan for Guppies
Do guppies need a filter?
There’s no definite answer to whether guppies need a filter – some people insist that they manage fine without one, while others would never keep guppies without a filter. Here at GFC, we recommend that you add a small filter to your guppy tank.
You may want to consider a sponge filter powered by an air pump (make sure you buy the right size for your tank and have air pump tubing too!).
A sponge filter should be perfectly adequate for guppies and is better than having no filter at all, as it will certainly help keep the water a little bit cleaner.
It isn’t necessary to have a large, powerful filter for a guppy tank as, compared to goldfish for example, guppies don’t produce very much waste and won’t pollute their water quickly as long as they are kept in an appropriately sized tank.
In fact, more powerful filters can actually be dangerous for your guppies! The strong current created by the filter can drag them in to the filter or pin them against the side of the filter inlet!
Of course, whether you have a filter or not, you should do regular water changes to make sure that your guppies’ tank water doesn’t get too polluted!
Before deciding how big a tank you need for your guppies, you should first consider how many guppies you want to keep and the ratio or males to females. When keeping a mixture of males and females, it’s best to keep guppies in groups of three (also knows as “trios”), with at leasttwo females for each male.
This means that you could keep 3 guppies (one male, two females), 6 guppies (two males, four females), 9 guppies (three males, six females), and so on. You can find out why this is in our article on guppy male to female ratios.
Once you’ve decided how many guppies you want, you can think about tank size. We recommend at least one gallon of tank water per guppy. Starting at a minimum of 4 gallons. This means that for one “trio” of a male and two females, you would need 4 gallons (as that’s the minimum). Then, for any higher number of guppies, simply stick to a 1:1 ratio.