I think your are correct, that a lot of female guppies are not cannibals. As Q-man suggests, if they are well fed, the odds of cannibalism are a lot less.

That was quick thinking of you in opening that bag. That wouldn't be standard procedure for acclimating (adjusting) new guppies, but exceptional times demand exceptional measures.

There is even the question as to whether cannibalism can be learned. Many guppies and other livebearers (but not all of them), which are well fed, will accept the fry as just a part of their world. If the water quality is high (meaning partial 25-45% weekly water changes with treated, aquarium warm, maybe seasoned water), if there are several hiding places for fry and if the guppies do not get too crowded, that will continue.

Sometimes a guppy female will be quite a cannibal. Some of the better guppy breeders will give a female a chance and if she continues to eat fry, she will be plunked into a community tank and her fry will not be saved or selected for future breeders.

That sounds pretty cold, but guppies are usually very generous with fry and so a person can only save so many fry. Why save fry from a line which tends towards cannibalism?

If your three females continue to drop fry every month (they are already good for five more months) and all their fry grew up and had babies, you would be approaching 1,000 guppies by Christmas. (Ho-ho-ho!) Bet they didn't mention that at the shop. ;)

Q-man has done a good job of explaining the advantages of a diary. Your new diary immediately goes to the top of the list of diaries and also is at the top of the "everything" page.

You do want to check out the Immediate Help stuff, as time permits. When you get around to reading the second section on New Tank/Cycling/Setting Up/Water Changing you will realize that although you did a lot better than most new aquarium owners, you got away with a couple of things which many people are not so fortunate with.

Your enthusiasm and your careful observation of the birthing mother certainly are to be applauded. I smiled when you mentioned your interest in that female guppy. I remember being smitten by a female dwarf gourami when I was your age. She was carried home under my coat while my brother and I bounced home in the back seat of our folks' car on a very cold winter day. She survived the trip and did take enough extra guppy fry, in a pretty well planted 10-gallon tank with a thicket of hornwort, that the tank was only seriously overcrowded.

By the way your parents may have not offered you a lot of help in terms of knowing what was happening with the fry ("they" just don't put that much about guppies on the backs of cereal boxes or in the papers), but it sounds like they have been terrifically supportive of your efforts to get equipment and tanks. If you don't have them yet but have a birthday coming up, mention how great it would be if you could get test kits for ammonia, nitrites and nitrates. Then you not only will be getting into biology and life sciences, but also chemistry. Those kits will make sense as you learn about the Nitrogen Cycle.

If you keep up interest even in female fish, you not only deserve the moniker FishFreak, but are in serious danger of becoming a Fish Head.