Endler Guppy Care and Breeding Guide: The Ultimate Nano Livebearer

Endler Guppy Care and Breeding Guide: The Ultimate Nano Livebearer

Endlers are one of my favourite fish to breed. They are tiny, ridiculously colourful, and they breed like clockwork with almost no effort. If you have never kept livebearers before, endlers are the perfect place to start. If you are already a fan, this guide covers everything from basic care to managing a breeding colony.

What are endlers?

Endlers (Poecilia wingei) are a small livebearer species from Venezuela. They are closely related to guppies but are a separate species. Males are tiny, reaching only about 2 to 2.5cm, while females are larger at around 3cm. What males lack in size they make up for in colour. Depending on the variety, males display combinations of metallic blue, green, orange, red, yellow, and black patterning.

I keep and breed a wide range of Endler varieties here at Hand Picked Aquatics, including Japan Blue, Fire Tail Tiger, Sunburst Green Cobra, El Tigre, Ginga Rubra, Silverado, and many more.

Browse all my endler varieties

Tank setup

Endlers are not demanding when it comes to their setup. Here is what they need:

  • Tank size: 20 litres minimum for a small group. A 40 to 60 litre tank gives you room for a proper breeding colony.
  • Temperature: 22 to 28 degrees Celsius. A standard aquarium heater set to 24 degrees works well.
  • Filtration: A sponge filter is ideal. It provides gentle filtration without creating strong flow that can tire out these small fish, and it is safe for fry.
  • Plants: Endlers thrive in planted tanks. Floating plants like guppy grass and red root floaters are especially important because they provide hiding spots for newborn fry. Stem plants, mosses, and other dense vegetation all work well too.
  • Water: Endlers prefer slightly hard, alkaline water, but they are adaptable to most tap water conditions in Australia. They are not fussy.

Feeding

Endlers eat just about anything. A quality small pellet or flake food as a daily staple works well. Supplement with live or frozen food like daphnia, baby brine shrimp, or microworms for conditioning and colour enhancement.

Feed once or twice a day in small amounts. They are tiny fish with tiny stomachs, so a little goes a long way.

Breeding endlers

This is the easy part. If you have males and females in the same tank, they will breed. There is no special conditioning needed, no separate breeding tank required, and no complicated setup. Endlers are livebearers, meaning females give birth to free-swimming fry rather than laying eggs.

Females can produce a new batch of fry every 23 to 28 days. A single female can drop anywhere from 5 to 25 fry per batch depending on her size and age. The fry are born fully formed and immediately start swimming and looking for food.

The biggest challenge with breeding endlers is not getting them to breed. It is managing the population. A colony can grow quickly, so plan ahead for what you will do with the excess fish.

Raising fry

Endler fry are small but not as tiny as some other species. They can eat crushed flake food from day one, which makes them easy to raise. For faster growth and better survival, feed them baby brine shrimp, microworms, or vinegar eels.

If the tank is well planted with plenty of floating plants like guppy grass, many fry will survive even in the main tank without being separated. The plants give them places to hide from hungry adults.

If you want to maximise survival, use a breeding box or move the pregnant female to a separate tank before she drops.

Keeping pure lines

One important thing about endlers: if you want to keep specific varieties pure, you need to keep them separate. Endlers will crossbreed freely with other endler varieties and with guppies. If you mix varieties together, the offspring will be hybrids and you will lose the distinct colour patterns over time.

I keep all my endler lines in separate tanks for this reason. If you are buying multiple varieties from me, house them in different tanks to maintain the purity of each line if that is important to you. 

Males only display tanks

If you do not want to deal with breeding, a males-only endler tank is a brilliant option. A group of male endlers in a planted nano tank is one of the most colourful setups you can create. Males will display to each other constantly, showing off their best colours without the population explosion that comes with mixed groups.

I sell assorted males only for exactly this purpose.

Tankmates

Endlers are peaceful and do well with other gentle nano species. Good tankmates include:

Avoid keeping endlers with anything large enough to eat them or aggressive enough to nip their fins.

Why I keep endlers

Endlers are one of those fish that are easy enough for a complete beginner but interesting enough to keep an experienced fishkeeper engaged for years. The variety of colours, the ease of breeding, and the personality of the males make them endlessly entertaining. I always have endlers running in my fish room and they are consistently one of my most popular fish.

If you have any questions about keeping or breeding endlers, email me at elyza@handpickedaquatics.com Happy to help.

Cheers,

Elyza

Hand Picked Aquatics

Back to blog