is breeding guppies easy

Question
I want to get a male and female guppy to breed but what i want to know is are guppies likely to mate and get pregnant if you just let them get to know each other or will they just mate anyway?

Answer
Hi Mariel,

Breeding guppies is very easy. In fact, if you get them to breed, you will probably end up with more guppies than you know what to do with! A male and a female will probably mate if just the two of them are in a tank, but this stresses the female out a whole lot and makes it more likely that she'll jump out of the tank, bang around and hurt herself, or get nipped by the male. It's just too hard on a female to take all of the advances of the male, all herself. That's why a 1:3 ratio of male to females is recommended, so that the attentions of the male can be spread out, so to speak. Since females are rather drab, most people don't like to have more females than males in their tank, but if you're serious about breeding guppies, this is what you ought to do. Otherwise you can have an all male tank, which works well. A dozen guppies in an all male 10 gallon tank (cycled, of course) is a dazzling display, hard to compete with that color and movement!

For more information on breeding guppies, read below:
http://www.centralpets.com/php/search/storiesdisplay.php?Story=564
http://www.fishlore.com/Articles/BreedingTheGuppy.htm
http://www.fishforever.co.uk/livebearers.html

The key to keeping guppies happy (and therefore breeding) is to focus on the two, or maybe three, most important aspects of their care:
* water quality
* water chemistry
* diet

Guppies, like all livebearers, like hard and alkaline water. That is, a pH of 7 or higher, and a high alkalinity and hardness, as measured by a test kit. They hate soft water! If you have soft water, you can make a DIY Malawi salt mix, which raises the carbonate hardness:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080121123900AAqP9ZL
The above link takes you to a recipe for Malawi salt mix.

Any fish tank containing fish ought to be cycled, meaning 0 ppm of ammonia and nitrites. Nitrates (with an A) should be present, but low, under 20 ppm. Guppies won't breed in uncycled tanks! If you need it, there's lots of information available on the nitrogen cycle online, just use Google to search for "nitrogen cycle".

Diet is really important to getting guppies to breed. A varied, tasty diet will really get them going! They love frozen worms (Tubifex or bloodworms) and live foods like brine shrimp or ghost shrimp. They also need lots of vegetable material in their diet. Frozen or canned, unsalted peas with the skins pinched off works well. Nori (those sheets of dried seaweed used for making sushi) also provides lots of green material for them. A variety of slices of vegetables (weighed down with a heavy clip, such as a magnetic Chip Clip) should be picked at eagerly by guppies. Zucchini, cucumber, and romaine lettuce seem to be the most popular. You can also provide them greens by giving them Spirulina flakes or pellets, along with algae wafers.

I hope those suggestions help!

Take care,
Nicole