Guppy breeding is definitely profitable if you know how much fry to produce or in short, how frequently you allow male and female guppies to mate and produce the fry.
What is Guppy breeding business?
Like every other business, all you need is a balance between the how many new fry you allow to take birth and how many adults you sell. For these fish to sell, obviously you’ll need a buyer.
A buyer could be local hobbyist in your local area or a pet store owner who is willing to buy your adult guppy.
The difficult part about breeding guppies is what is to be done to adult guppies that don’t get sold anywhere. This is where most business planning will fail. Let’s say an entire lot of hundreds of guppies don’t get sold for a month. Then in that case many breeders are not ready to “throw away” known as culling of these because of humanitarian point of view. So it’s a balance of practical thinking and emotional thinking that you must adhere to in this business because live animals are involved in this.
There are many more factors that will affect the “profit” in this business.
Even before you set up your first tank you must carefully plan what you’ll do about guppies that don’t get sold. Guppies produce fry in hundreds and since these are relatively easy to take care of many new comers in fish keeping hobby are ready to buy them as their first batch of fish in a new tank.
Because of this advantage, you can definitely go ahead and start this business with minimum investment of about $25-30 right at your home and start selling guppies locally or to other pet store owners for some good profits.
Any business runs on just one simple principle and fish breeding business is not any different from this. You must calculate total cost of producing fry and sell them one by one or in pair.
The tricky part in this is that you don’t have any idea how many fry will be born in each “breeding batch”. Guppy females can give birth to just two fry or even hundreds sometimes. Many times not all the fry are going to survive. So it takes some time to really identify the “break even” point in this business.
By break-even point I mean your earning will be either exactly equal to or more that the amount you spent right from setting up the tank to selling guppies, to cover all that initial cost of set up.
Setting a guppy breeding tank
A breeding tank doesn’t have to be a big fancy tank with decorations and all. If you are serious about this as a business then minimizing cost is one of the main criteria’s to consider. Many people prefer “breeding boxes” instead of tanks so that they are easy to set up and even clean. Here is the minimum equipment you require to start breeding guppy fish and setting up a farm.
- Breeding box/tub – This can be a small tub about 10-12 gallons capacity. It’s a small plastic tub without any glass faces and you can only view the fish from top. This will cost you about 4-4.5 USD
- Aerator/ air pump – Dissolved Oxygen is must for fish. Even if you are just setting up a small breeding box, it will need aerated water for fish and fry to survive and a small air pump that sits outside of the box will do that job. This will cost about 5-6 USD
- Airline tubing/ hose – A rubber tube that runs from the air pump into the tank to release forced air is required. Sometimes when you buy the air pump it will be ready with the air tubing in the package. However if you want to buy this it will cost you about USD 1 /feet of length.
- Sponge filter – A small sponge filter is a must for keeping the water clean as this filter will suck most of visible dirt and solid particles easily. This will cost about 3-4 USD
- Floating plants – For this simple tan set up “Hornwart” plants will work best as they can provide tiny hiding spaces for the fish and fry. This will cost about 3 USD
- Guppies – You can get these at Pet Smart for about 3-4 USD. While buying guppies obviously you’ll need to buy a male and a female because you will be breeding guppies. A male only guppy fish tank will be useless for breeding purpose. If you want to buy more than one pair then it is necessary to maintain a ratio of male and female guppies in the breeding box. You must have three females to every male guppy in the breeding box/tank. This is done to avoid male fights and dominance over females. Fish fights can be stressful and even death can occur.
Tips for maximizing your guppy breeding business profits
The secret to maximizing profits in any business is really simple.
- Minimize production costs – In your guppy farming case see that initial set up is really simple and costs as much less as possible. Every business will have a running cost and in your case it will be fish food, electricity, maintenance etc.
- Always focus on quality – In fish breeding business there are certain rules and if you follow them you can always be at the top. Always pay topmost priority to producing high quality and healthy fish fry.
When customer buys from you he must get a healthy fish (or a pair) which is free of any toxins, diseases or internal parasites and to do this you must choose the right kind of breeding pair which is free of diseases themselves.
Completely avoid “inbreeding” of fish which is likely to produce fish will physical deformities. If newly born fry themselves are sick it’s most likely to happen that they will transfer the same to next generation.
In any business “word of mouth” is the number one type of promotion which is free and it builds your reputation. Don’t build or follow “shortcuts” that will only land you in trouble. By following rules of Mother Nature you’ll go a long way in this business and will be able to produce high quality fish that are healthy and happy.
If this happens your customers will buy from you again and again and even encourage others to buy from you as well.
Where to advertise your guppy farming business?
Just like all other businesses even this one will require some sort of advertising initially. Unlike most other businesses “fish keeping” is not a very popular hobby because not every other person will have fish tank in their home.
The demand for guppies will always going to be limited and to gain serious traction of money you’ll need to advertise your guppy farm in front of the right kind of audience so that people know firsthand that you sell guppy male and female species.
These are some ways to get started and the best way is to start online.
1) Facebook groups
Facebook is certainly a starting point from where you can start for free and get your farm in front of people who are enthusiasts in fish keeping. You can join several facebook group communities that are related to fish tanks, aquariums, fish breeding, fish food, etc.
You can participate in discussions, answer questions people are asking and even post your guppy farm photos and videos so that local people in your area get to know that you are selling guppy male and female species.
2) Quora
This is a question and answer website where people ask questions and other users answer them. You can regularly participate on this website for free and answer questions related to fish tank set up, fish diseases, aquariums and other related questions people are asking.
3) Youtube
You can even create small videos of your guppy farm and upload them to YouTube. The best kinds of videos are “progressive videos” where you can start filming right at the time when new fry are born and film stages of how they are growing every day. People love to watch such types of videos where they can actually see the growth of a guppy from fry to adult.
You can freely advertise your guppy farm this way and interested buyers will contact you for buying these.
4) Start a blog
You can start a blog and share your knowledge of guppy breeding, taking care and setting up tanks at home. It can be a part time effort and if things go really well this can even generate extra money for you by selling advertising or advertising some related aquarium products from Amazon.
Image credits : Photo by karengdr at Morguefile.com