What do Baby Guppies Look Like?

Did you just get a guppy fish? Well, I must say it’s a great choice to add to your fish tank. After all, they are vibrant fish that bring out the brightest colors of a fish tank.

Guppies give birth to live baby guppies which need time to mature. Baby guppies are born curled in small balls. They will uncurl and start swimming right after birth. They are approximately 6 mm.

I would argue it’s a more important matter if they turn out to be baby guppies. But how do you exactly identify baby guppies? This article aims to answer just that. What do baby guppies look like and what can you do to use everything at your disposal to make every moment of their lives as baby guppies into adult guppies as smooth as possible?

Table of Contents

How are Guppies Born?

Guppies are unique fish that don’t lay any eggs. They are known as livebearers. The female fish gives birth to a group of other live fish. Healthy guppies will give birth monthly for a time of around 2 years. As with most fish, the mother fish will hide away to have her babies. At the time of birth, most guppies are not ready to fend for themselves and will have to hide at first. After a few hours, the new baby guppies will be traveling around and beginning their quest for food.

How many Babies do Guppies Have?

A female fish will birth an average of around 40 baby guppies at a time. This number can vary depending on the health of the fish, as well as other factors. Typically, you will not see a group of guppies born below 20 or above 60 fries in one birthing session.

What do Baby Guppies Look Like?

The easiest way to pinpoint a baby guppy fish is to know how and when it even came to be. If you saw a female guppy give birth to a fry, every healthy fry will begin to swim immediately and move upwards while unhealthy and premature tend to sink. These guppies tend to be much smaller than your average-sized guppies and are curled into small balls about 0.6 cm total in length.

This particular stage in a guppy’s life is the fry stage. But what if you didn’t witness a guppy give birth? Is the guppy still old enough to be considered an adult? After the fry stage, a guppy faces different stages in its life before reaching full adulthood. So, there are still plenty of ways to determine at which stage your guppy is in right now.

1. Juvenile Stage

In a month or two after being born, guppies tend to reach the juvenile stage. This is the point of a guppy’s life where despite not reaching adulthood you can determine their gender. This comes in handy when determining the ratio between genders when considering stress-related concerns.

But what difference does each gender have? Female guppies tend to have longer tails, larger bodies, a sudden burst of colors, and a particular gravid spot near their anal tail. While male guppies may color during this stage that gravid spot for female guppies makes all the difference.

2. Teens Stage

Also known as the stage where guppies become sexually active. However be aware of the risks of having female guppies among males at this stage since if you do not intend to breed them, it is a good choice to separate both genders.

3. Adult Stage

Guppies reach the final stage and enter adulthood. Their height maximizes to up to 6-8 cm in length and any habit you may have adopted for the best interest of baby guppies can be ditched at this stage. Even if the stage previous to this did warn about the threat of unwanted breeding among guppies. That warning still applies to this stage as well since guppies do not become infertile until the age of 2 and up.

The Bottom Line on What do Baby Guppies Look Like?

You have to keep in mind, that baby guppies are in danger as soon as they are born hence you immediately shift them to another tank for a couple of weeks. Their diet, the tank, and water conditions should be kept in mind. They should get ample amounts of light to grow properly. If you follow everything above your guppies are guaranteed to grow into healthy adults!