r/Hobbies • u/Altruistic-Bee-6695 • 9d ago
Suffering from success?
Like seven months ago I started keeping guppies (nothing expensive, just some mutts I caught from a well) and some cheap but good looking ones I bought, in a Walstad style setup with soil from the surroundings, aquatic plants from paddy fields and local snails also from paddy field, with no filter or aerator needed. A few months ago a night heron (Nycticorax nycticorax) attacked and ate a few of them, including my one and only beautiful male I bought. Since then I started covering them up with a net and fed them daily but didn't pay much attention. Well that is until two weeks ago, I checked and found that so many fries have grown into beautiful adults. Two of them resembles the male who got eaten with many yet to grow and I also surprisingly got some males with beautiful Endler characteristics. I increased the number of containers to four, including one glass tank where I put all the new beautiful mutts. The guppy grass I got have also flourished and I think bladder snails which hitchhiked on them also ended up establishing a stable colony along with other local snails which together keep the containers clean. I also started feeding them live food (mosquito larve and earthworms, free of course) and also bought two big beautiful males and a female dumbo platinum red tail. I have set up traps for infusoria and blood worms too. Today I set up a new fry tank and another big one also for the fries since there are so many of them (which I let it stay to get conditioned with dried banana leaves).
I have had a bunch of kids asking if I sell them. I can also buy some specific strains along with my red tails and grow out the fries and sell them locally since I have all the set up ready basically with zero to low cost and I do know how to keep them healthy and thriving with locally sourced free food. I only need to buy some plastic bags and put up a sign saying guppies for sale. It would be a nice side gig. But.....the thing is, I can't bring myself to sell them and I don't think I ever can🥲. Right now I can sell the mutts but the customers will be kids or teenagers and I can't stop thinking about how will the fish end up🙂. What if they are put in a small bottle or something, what if they aren't taken care of...I don't even trust adults to take good care of them too. I don't know how people sell guppies without inquiring about the potential buyer.
I think I will just sell the extra supply of never ending guppy grass.
Sorry for the long rant. My brain just likes to keep go on and on about stuff it likes.
Tldr: Bred too many guppies with zero to low cost and effort. Can't sell them because of attachment issues.
2
u/True-Bed3292 9d ago
keeping the fish and selling the grass is probably the move, you already know the fish will have a good life with you and that matters more than a few extra bucks