7 replies to this topic

[Gambusia]

Can you mix eastern gambusia and guppies?

Thanks

[gerald]

With short-finned guppies or Endlers they might be OK, but Gambusia will probably shred long-finned guppies.

[dmarkley]

gerald, on 22 December 2009 - 02:51 PM, said:

With short-finned guppies or Endlers they might be OK, but Gambusia will probably shred long-finned guppies.

I had a school of gambusia collected locally here, maybe 15-20 fish.  First they killed the tadpoles.  Next they killed a plecostomus.  Then they killed a pair of blacknose daces.  Finally they began to kill each other.  Now there are 3 left.  I also have a pair of 3 inch American eels which they are apparently unaware of.

I was warned that gambusia were mean.  But hey, how mean can a tiny little guppy-like fish be?  Well, now I am passing along that warning!

Dean

[keepnatives]

dmarkley, on 22 December 2009 - 03:26 PM, said:

I had a school of gambusia collected locally here, maybe 15-20 fish.  First they killed the tadpoles.  Next they killed a plecostomus.  Then they killed a pair of blacknose daces.  Finally they began to kill each other.  Now there are 3 left.  I also have a pair of 3 inch American eels which they are apparently unaware of.

I was warned that gambusia were mean.  But hey, how mean can a tiny little guppy-like fish be?  Well, now I am passing along that warning!

Dean

The eels may well have given the gambusia some assistance they like fish in their diet and feed at night.  Even small ones will take some nips out of larger fish.

[notatus]

If you keep Gambusia (Spanish for worthless) with your guppies or Endler's, they will be short finned indeed, possibly for the rest of their brief and miserable lives!

Brought a young pair of Gambusia home with some juvenile darters found in very shallow water in the Black River, from the Cape Girardeau NANFA convention and set 'em up in a 20. Between the cannibalistic tendencies of the Gambusia female and the darters, I didn't expect any Gambusia fry. (With their equally cannibalistic cousins from Central America, one stuffs the aquarium so full of plants the one adult female Brachyrhaphis has to pull her way through the Najas and hornwort. She is fed defrosted, rinsed frozen food until she is sated. One then puts a few blackworms in a jar for her to prefer to any fry dumb enough to come near her until she can be pulled.)

I expected the female to chase away the rather pesky male Gambusia. Didn't expect that one day his gonopodium would be missing! Rather an unequivocal decision. After a couple of years the male was missing too.

Interestingly enough, she initially would chase the darters away from food, so a fair amount was fed, sometimes in different spots. Now that she is obviously aging, the darters return the favor. She gets a veggie flake or two to keep her going.

Haven't some mosquito control efforts backfired because the eastern Gambusia (affinis, holbrooki) have shown a preference for the fry of other fishes before the mosquito larvae? Local populations of mosquito eating fish native to the area were even eradicated.

Good luck with the Gambusia by themselves or perhaps with some pickerel.

Scott
Thorncreek Drainage, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Little Calumet.

[gzeiger]

Yes, pickerel make excellent tankmates for Gambusia.

[Brooklamprey]

I've kept some Gambusia sp. with Guppies and never had to much of an issue, but in general "Species only tank" is a rule.

[Gambusia]

I have a male gambusia (Eastern Mosquitofish I think) in a tank with a female pet shop guppy (along with other fish).  

I put the guppy in after the last of the wild female gambusia I had died. This was about a year, year and a half  ago.

I might even have one offspring from the two.

Edited by Gambusia, 21 January 2010 - 12:00 PM.