# Other Aquarium Forums > Freshwater Fauna > Livebearers >  Infertile guppy?

## ownu4free

Bought a pair of guppy from Seaview and it have been with me for almost half a year, till now still no sign of pregnancy. Added a second pair few months back and still no sign of pregnancy. Can any experts out there help? 

pair 11.jpg pair 1
pair 22.jpgpair 2

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## Dscheng

What other fish you have in your tank? If only this pair, yes add a few more female. Usually 1:3 will have higher chance. I

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## ownu4free

Only 2 pairs as well as some corys to clear the bottom

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## Interestor

female too old or not healthy.

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## ownu4free

> female too old or not healthy.


got one is smaller in size, whereas another one i slightly bigger, both don't look old. What are some symptoms of unhealthy? what should i do?

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## Guppendler

The females look too skinny and I cannot tell if the males are suffering from tail rot as the pictures are not clear enough. Possibly too inbred and become not fertile. Albinos are well known to suffer from infertility if not out-crossed by the 5th generations.

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## Interestor

> got one is smaller in size, whereas another one i slightly bigger, both don't look old. What are some symptoms of unhealthy? what should i do?


female looks either drop before or not healthy, as said , too skinny.

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## Cartoon

1st pic female, stomach flatten. No use already. 2nd pic female slightly better. Good luck to ur breeding.

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## emeraldking

They don't have to be infertile. It does happen that complete fertile species just won't reproduce themselves. And it doesn't have to be that they're unhealthy. From time to time this just happens with completely healthy fish. Even with guppies. But yes, albino and lutino guppies aren't that reproductive as guppies with black eyes. That's a fact!

From time to time it could help to do a bit more water changes. It might trigger them to mate... It simulates the rainfall like in the wild. And in free nature rainfall does trigger a lot of fish to mate.

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## emeraldking

Oh yeah, a very good example is the following:

I've purchased a group of paramaribo guppies September 2014. They just didn't reproduce themselves untill this last May. Now, I've got lots of them...
The same thing happened to my group of blonde vienna emerald bottomsword fancy guppies. I've purchased them also back in September 2014 and this past July they reproduced themselves for the first time.

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## Shi Xuan

Hi, 

I have a lot of problems with this in the past as well. This often occur with highly inbred fancy strains of guppies. There are several issues that may have affected this. It could be due to the low interest level of the males, the length of the gonopodium or the female simply is not producing eggs. 

If you shine a torch at the gravid spot of a female that is fertile, you could see eggs. This is much easier in albino but tricky with darker body base colors such as grey.

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## ownu4free

> Hi, 
> 
> I have a lot of problems with this in the past as well. This often occur with highly inbred fancy strains of guppies. There are several issues that may have affected this. It could be due to the low interest level of the males, the length of the gonopodium or the female simply is not producing eggs. 
> 
> If you shine a torch at the gravid spot of a female that is fertile, you could see eggs. This is much easier in albino but tricky with darker body base colors such as grey.


I tried those cheaper guppy bought from OTF , they are much hardy and they are fanciful as well, they are currently doing well in my larger community tank with tetras and i see fries swimming around too, i guess larger tank higher pregnancy rate?

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## Shi Xuan

> I tried those cheaper guppy bought from OTF , they are much hardy and they are fanciful as well, they are currently doing well in my larger community tank with tetras and i see fries swimming around too, i guess larger tank higher pregnancy rate?


I don't have a clue to be honest even until today. For example, I bred a line of blond snakeskin speartail which throws grey snakeskin speartail occasionally and the strain was extremely prolific. The strain died out while I was serving my National service. This is the one;

*Photo from Drakeho (Photobucket)*

I also had a platinum/metallic tuxedo speartail and although it lacks consistency, ie. doesn't breed true, at least they are very prolific. You can see the males chasing after the egg laden females all around the tank. It doesn't matter to me, because I look out to preserve some traits, such as Y-linked platinum and the speartail. 

That said, I have read somewhere that says that high temperature beyond 32 deg affects the egg production of females but I'm not sure and am not willing to try. Funny how guppies are called millions fish when they are not even as prolific as medakas or even wild anabantoides that I bred previously. Perhaps only the feral ones do better. 

Nonetheless, guppies are indeed interesting fish. Because their gene expression is so variable, you can have various color and shape combinations with them.

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