guppies . . . .

So um, now I have a few guppies. It was not planned. At fish club, the container of snails I received had four plain ordinary guppies in it. Nobody was interested so I shrugged: I'll feed to my angel or paradise fish. At home first I put them in a temporary container with fresh water.

They're so small. I would usually empty the transport water and fish into a small bucket, then net out the fish to go into the tank. But they came in a (clean!) urine sample cup, so the amount of water would not have let the guppies swim in the bottom of the bucket. I scooped them out in a medicine dose cup. The fish are so tiny, all four of them were in this.

There are three females and one smaller male. The larger female, with a squared-off abdomen, probably holding fry, I put into the shrimp jar. Temporarily. I didn't want to give her the stress of being chased by a predator right away, hoping to see her drop fry at least once?

She's the same size as a shrimp. She was hiding so still among the plants at first, the shrimps walked up and tried to grab her. Incidentally, I only have five shrimps now. One must have died and been eaten by the others, when I was on vacation recently.

She looked quite stressed yesterday, so I was kind of surprised to see her alive this morning. I don't usually feed the shrimp jar more than twice a week, but I sprinkled a bit of 'bug bites' in there, and saw her eat some.

Meanwhile, the other three guppies went into the window tank. I fully expected them to be a meal for Laddie. The paradise fish chased them immediately- in quick sharp rushes but couldn't catch them. One dived into the bolbitis fern thicket, others hid in low corners- this one under edge of a driftwood chunk.

Later then ventured out. They're good at staying unnoticed up at the surface among the sweet potato roots and salvinia:

Here's a backlit photo with guppies, top left. Paradise fish, mid right.

I'm surprised Laddie seems to be ignoring them now. Maybe he realizes he can't catch them? If they start to breed I expect he'll eat the fry. Or maybe he's full of snails and not hungry enough to try again.