Guppy gives birth 2 weeks apart

Hi wierd thing..my lone female guppy, who was a baby when I got her 2 mo ago, gave birth on Thanksgiving and had 5 fry in the tank when I woke up. Didnt know she was pregnant cause she was so small..well I woke up this morning and it's only been 14 days and she had at least 30 more fry !!!!! How is this possible? I got her from pet smart, like I said she was small. Had her only a month by herself so how the heck was she pregnant? Must have been with a male at some point..she has no interest in eating her babies and now I have a tank full of babies!! Lol question is how did she have them 2 weeks apart??? One more thing, I have 2 peppered cories in the tank to with the 1 guppy and the fry...I'm supposed to feed the fry multiple times a day and give them crushed tropical flakes and dried blood worms..thing is the other fish.are they being overfed? How do I do this without separating them? Are the fry ok with 2x a day? I am putting pics of the newborn fry the 2 wk old fry and the mother who still has a gravid spot!!! There kind hardly 2 see..Thanks

 

Guppies can hold babies at multiples stages. They are baby machines!

 

Congratulations Norayfoxx and welcome to fishlore.

Live bearers fry are much much bigger than fry that hatch from eggs. They eat dry food on day one and can find food without an adult fish or a human helping. Without wanting to say they raise themselves without any help from humans I can say you can relax about feeding . Feeding twice a day is ok . Hopefully the tank is established enough after 2 months to have a little bio film / algae/ Infusorea in it? Raising any fry is exciting and challenging . I am trying not to say live bearers are super easy as they can take care of themselves. But I guess I said it?

Just a very very very very small amount of food is all a fry needs.
With the extra food comes the need for more water changes.
As you now have 30 odd fish you need to think about next month and the month after that.
Nobody has enough flat surfaces in their house for all the tanks needed to raise one females fry from one year.

The juveniles at 3 months will breed including with mum. The females at 4 months will have their own fry. Hopefully at 3 months the juveniles will eat most of the next batch of fry ?

In an ideal world you need a tank for males and another for females and their fry. Each week you need to separate the male fry. If you don’t you will have fish soup in no time.

 

Thank you..I plan on giving the fry to the pet store once they are old enough not to be stressed too much. When I woke up 2day there are only maybe 15 fry left out of the new batch. I dont see any dead and cant figure out how 1 guppy who didnt eat her first liter, ate around 30 guppies overnight. But that's ok I'd rather have nature due it's course.

 

Nature is red in tooth and claw.

Fingers crossed you get a few to survive to adulthood

 

When this happens with a female guppy, it has got to do with the amount of nutrients in the egg. In general, with ovoviviparous female livebearers, all eggs before fertilization are provided with a certain amount of nutrients. This is called pre-fertilization. But it does occur from time to time that a number of eggs have more or less nutrients in the egg. Which makes the development of a number of embryos go faster or slower. In case of faster, a number of those embryos will be born sooner than expected. This has got nothing to do with superfetation, btw. That's a total different story.
In normal conditions, all eggs have the same amount of nutrients, which makes the pace of development of each individual embryo equal to all other embryos of the same batch.
In real livebearers (viviparous), the development of embryos are also at the same pace but differences in body size of each embryos is more at hand. This is because they are maternally fed by a placenta. And with a bigger batch of embryos, it will happen that a number of those embryos have been better fed internally than other embryos of the same batch.
Most female ovoviviparous livebearers such as guppies, can store sperm packets of a single mating or multiple matings for over a year in the folds of the fallopian tube. So, not just a few months (this is a mistake that a lot of people make).
Female viviparous livebearers however can not store sperm packets and need a new mating in order to become pregnant again.

Holding embryos at different stages at the same time, is called superfetation. But guppies don't have that ability. So, the remark about a guppy can have embryos at different stages, that have been given before in this topic, has got only to do with differences of the amount of nutrients in the eggs. This causes that it may take some days or 1-2 weeks before the other embryos will be born. And that has got nothing to do with superfetation.

 

thanks for all that information. It's very helpful.