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So just this week I've been set up a row of seven gallon aquariums and I've been
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discussing with my members what I should put in those tanks. One person contacted me and she
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said I'm getting a five gallon and I want to keep guppies. How many guppies can I keep in a
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five gallon tank? So I said I'd make this video and give her my answer. Hello friends
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welcome back to the channel if you're new here my name is Richard. Five gallon aquariums are
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incredibly popular and a lot of people start in the hobby with a five gallon or a seven
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or something similar and a lot of people want to start with guppies so it's a
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reasonable question to ask how many guppies can I keep in a five gallon tank
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Well in my experience you really want to keep about four or five male
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guppies in a five gallon. Why do I say male guppies? Well the great thing
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about a male guppy is you get all of the color and all of the personality but
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you don't get any breeding going on. On the top shelf here my first seven gallon I
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set up I put six male guppies along with about 20 yellow shrimp. Now guppies of
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course are live bearers and are famed for their ability to reproduce. So if in
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that same gallon tank we added at least one female the chances are within a
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month or two our four or five fish is going to become 30 or 40 fish and a five
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gallon tank is just the amount of work to keep the water fresh in a five gallon tank
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with 30 or 40 fish would just be, it just wouldn't happen. The tank would be a disaster, it would quickly implode on itself
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through poor water quality. And of course the other problem if you had males and females male guppies are incredibly persistent breeders They wish to be spawning all the time And if you ever watched a tank with male and female guppies in you will notice the
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males constantly go female to female to female trying to spawn. It's basically when they're not eating, they want to be spawning
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If in our five gallon tank we added three males and just one female, those three males would
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quickly hound that female and harass her constantly and unfortunately she may well die from the stress
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What we try and keep is we try and keep in any tank one male with three or four females and that way
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we spread out his advances. We spread out his aggression in wishing to breed all the time. So going back to
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our five gallon tank if we use that ratio we would have one male and three or four females and
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that means within a month or two our three or four females could have given birth to
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20 or 30 babies each. And now we've got well over 100 guppies in our 5 gallon tank
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A 5 gallon tank is a fabulous little aquarium. It's a fabulous introduction to the hobby
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and guppies are a great fish to keep in it. But really, you want to stick with males
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you want to put 3, 4 or 5 males in there and you can enjoy their colour, enjoy their personality
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without having to worry about the fact the population is going to explode and take over the tank
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Keeping guppy populations under control can be a tricky part of keeping guppies
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They can quickly eat you out of house and home. Before you know it, your half dozen guppies is one or two hundred guppies
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If you want to know how I keep my guppy populations under control, you should watch this video next
