Hello,
I decided to join because I'm planning on starting up a planted breeding aquarium for guppies. I currently have a 90 gallon aquarium with a turtle and guppies, and would like to do a pseudo-experiment to look at the behavioural plasticity of guppies in response to growing up in the presence of a perceived predator. Here's my situation:
The survival of newly added juveniles is quite low, but those who do survive the bottleneck -- and some of these grow up to be colourful fancy-tailed males -- have no problem successfully breeding and growing to a ripe old age. My turtle only hunts the fish for the first couple of days they're in the tank, and once the fish learn to stay away from his face, he ignores them completely, and they have the run of the tank. (The turtle is an older guy, mostly herbivorous, who prefers an easy meal of banana or lettuce).
My thought is that if I add fish into the tank as fry, rather than juveniles, by the time they grow to 'morsel size', they'll be wise in the ways of the turtle tank, and will be able to thrive there. Currently, fry born into the tank do well; however, I would like to start populating the tank with fancier varities of guppies (i.e., not feeders).
Has anyone here tried something like this before? Or know where a better place to post this kind of question would be? I realized partway through this 'hello' message that it probably belongs in a different forum...
Amanda