20 gal. stocking question

[Iclimb06]

We are finally ready to begin stocking my girlfriends 20 gallon (no live plants). She would like to get some fancy guppies, and a pair of black sailfin mollies. Eventually we will add a couple cats which will likely be cories.
1.) How many guppies can she get.
2.) What is the best for pair of mollies, ie. M/M, F/F, F/M?
Thank you in advanced!

[Fishalicious]

With livebearers you can start with a small group..believe me in no time the 20 gallons will be filled with babies and even more of them :11:

Although fun to watch more fish from the start I really recommend just strarting with a small group of guppies... they have babies about every 30 days.

With livebearers always stock 2 or 3 females to every male so some of the ladies can take a break from the persistant males.

[Iclimb06]

Thanks for the reply. I never thought about reproduction, which would be an obvious thing to keep in mind. My girlfriend kept 3 mollies (1 male 2 female), but never saw any fry, so I guess it didn’t cross my mind that these mollies and the guppies might reproduce.

Also, she only wants to mollies, so should we get two females?

[OscarFan]

It seemed like my Guppies were always haveing babies in my tank. If you do get them I reccomend you get something that will eat the babies to keep the numbers down.

[Eileen]

You might want to just have a male guppies only in the tank. I do have females in a smaller tank by them selfs. They breed like crazy. The male guppies in my 55. gal. tank are doing great with 6 Harlequen Rasboras, 3 panda cories. I'm still stocking my newly cycled tank. The male guppies are alot nicer looking anyways. Remember when stocking try to under stock. 55. gal would be stocked to 40-45 inches in fish. Use their adult size to determine how many to get. Guppies are about 2" adult size. So I would put 10-15 inches in a 20 gal. tank. The tank will stay cleaner under stocking then over stocking. Also with livebearers if you don't want the babies have all males. Don't seperate the babies the other fish will eat them and the tank will not get so overcrowed as bad as that sounds. If you want male/females together some of the lucky ones that hide well will end up living. If you look at the livebearers forum you will see that you can't keep up with all the babies and it get overwhelming at times. Good luck!

[bluekrissyspikes]

i just wanted to add that the females can still have babies for quite some time even if there is no male present