# Will guppies overrun a tank where there are other bigger fish in the tank?



## jadaBlu (Feb 14, 2013)

Someone is selling some nice looking guppies I have goldbarbs, giant danios and corydoras. I have always avoided livebearers for fear of ending up with too many. Would the bigger fish likely keep the population under control?
My goldbarbs are sedate fish that mostly bottom feeders I doubt they will be fin nippers. They are large though ranging in size from 2.5 to 4.5 inches.

I have always been a save the fish person it might be hard to let the babies get eaten. How have you felt about this if you are a "softie" in that way.


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## Kaxen (Mar 3, 2013)

Depends how excited your fish are by live food and how many places the fry will be able to hide where the larger fish can't get them.

And there will always be that guppy that hides extremely well. I emptied a tank down to like two inches of water and gravel and it still took like two days and five people to point out and catch all the fry. I think at best you could slow down the population growth but it won't stop completely.


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## Carrot Nose (Dec 23, 2015)

Consider getting just all male guppies, or all female guppies.


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## Kaxen (Mar 3, 2013)

Don't get all female guppies unless you know for sure they have been without male contact in a long time. 

>_> My guppy problems all started with two females who were not virgins when I got them from the pet store.


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## Rennie Sky (Feb 27, 2016)

I had a tank with Neons, Platy and Cory. Platy are another live bearer and I assume things would work similarly.

Mostly, they were self regulating. The Platy themselves would eat most of the babies. I didn't have a big issue with it, but I did keep a breeder box. Every once in a while I'd get attached to a fry, or really like it's color and separate it until it got too big to eat. 

That said I also had a 60 gallon with a Gourami and an Angel as well as quite a few smaller guys. If my Platy tank started to get too crowded, some smaller fry would get transferred to the 60 as food. I had one little dude that made it through all that to reach maturity, so he earned the right to go back with his family.

I have no idea if the giant Davos would be good fry hunters or not. Basically though, you would probably need to be prepared to occasionally rehome if you can find a LFS interested, euthanize or sell as feeders. If you don't think you'd be comfortable with that, I'd probably pass.


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