40 Gallon Tank Recommendation on how many guppies

Hi everyone,

So my livebearer tank is actually 37 gallon tank and right now there is 5 mollies and 6 guppies (plus tons of babies that I will give away). my wife felt in love with guppies from and online guppy shop and was thinking on expanding the family, the thing is she wants to add 3 more males, right know there is 4 males and 2 females (will add more females maybe next week), so she wants to have 7 males and that makes at least 14 females and I feel 5 mollies + 21 guppies is waaay too much for that tank size. I was wondering if its ok to keep a 1:1 ratio on males and females? are all guppy male thirsty to mate or maybe some of them will ignore females? I want to keep a reasonable amount of guppies in the tank and have the male not stress out the females. i would love to do a guppy pond for my small patio but i live in Virginia and here is either extremely hot or extremely cold to keep the temperature ideal.

Thank you in advance everyone.

 

Should always try to do at least 2-1 female male ratio… the females will get too stressed out

 

If you have enough in total and you have a lot of hiding spots you could pull of a 1:1. But couldn't you just get rid of the females with the babies?

 

If you have enough in total and you have a lot of hiding spots you could pull of a 1:1. But couldn't you just get rid of the females with the babies?

Getting rid of the females is a really tempting option but the reason i started fish hobby was because i want to experience breeding/growth process on fishes, maybe sell/gift fish in the future. i wanted to keep a ratio of 4:8 but she wants 3 more males haha, i guess i am either using my 20 gallon quarintine tank for the mollies or just tell her no to add more males at the moment. the tank has a decent amount of hiding places but not too much since i haven't fully planted the aquarium. anyways it don't matter the ratio even a 1:1 i would think its a huge load for that gallon size.

 

You could go more if you just do one gender - focus the males. Mixed with that many, you are looking at potentially hundreds of guppy fry a month.

Set up a 10 gallon and put in a single pair/trio if you want to enjoy breeding and come up with neat combinations.

Having that many breeding guppies in a 37 will get out of hand very very quickly. A single mature female will birth 30-50 fry every 30 days. They will birth for up to 6 months after their last encounter with a male - every 30 days.

 

I'm won't be saying anything about the numbers in the tank itself. But I'd like to say something about the m/f ratio. I'm a total livebearer enthusiast. And guppies do have my specific focus. Should it always be a rate with more females than males? Not at all...The amount of open space can be relevant in order to keep the males' chasing a bit down. Hiding spots can do a lot. But not all male guppies will spend the whole day long trying to mate. Even if males outnumber the females can help. For the males can keep themselves busy by showing who's the best guy in the tank. That's a game that can go on and on amongst males. If we would take a look at a number of guppy tanks overhere at my place, there are sufficient tanks where males outnumber the females without the females getting stressed. You just need to know what you're doing...

 

Well if your thinking about doing a tub, you could do the breeding in there. Also, you could bring the tub in in the winter.