creating new guppies

[lynmccoy]

Has anyone tried making a different color combination of fancy guppy? My granddaughter and I was looking online for albino females last night and found an article about a guy who bred a male red fancy moscow and a female blue moscow and the result was a beautiful guppy with a blue body and a red tail. It got my granddaughter thinking of all kinds of color combinations. Has anyone here tried breeding different strains? We're still looking for the albino gold female that has no color pigment, but the moscow combo sure was pretty.

 

[Kiara1125]

It takes a long time to create a new strain. You need at minumum, from what I've heard, 15 aquariums. Plus, people use a bare bottom with no decorations, they don't waste their money to make each tank look appealling (the Guppies can't tell the difference). Their are so many combinations that it gets confusing, plus people who are serious about breeding and creating a new strain of Fancy Guppies dedicate their whole life to creating this one strain. It could take years, even decades to produce the perfect strain where the Guppies look beautiful and the genetic makeup is the same everytime you breed the Guppies. So I suggest doing a large ammount of research if you are serious about trying to go into the Fancy Guppy business, because there are people that create "aquarium sheds" and ponds that are filled with nothing but guppies. Good luck with the research!!

 

[paperdog9]

I agree with kiara, but if you are just in it for the adventure of making a new species, give it a try, they might surprise you. I breed a red wag female platy with a marigold variatus male platy, and the result in one generation was a red platy with a black tail that faintly had red on it, and the body was slightly yellowish, especially when it reflected light. You could just get a few tanks and experiment with mixing different types of guppys, and even if it doesn't result how you want it, it will still be a fun experience! Good luck, I'd like to see how they turn out!

 

[Kiara1125]

I ended up creating Mickey Mouse/Wag Tiger Platies that can in gold or smokey gray for body color. And now, some of my Platy fry have oragne fins that are outlined on the edges with black. It looks like someone took a fine point sharpie and traced over the outline of their dorsal fins. It's so cool and when my computer stops being a jerk, I'll upload some pictures.

 

[freash_water_monster]

Well when i had guppies i thought this was really weird ok i kinda dont really remeber the colors because its been awhile but anyways i had a female that had an orange tail and a white body and a male that had yellow tail and a white body. The offspring turned out to have like a tiger tail that had stripes like a tiger.

 

[Kiara1125]

It's all in the genetics. My Half Black Guppy gave birth a few days ago and the fry are transparent (duh) but they have a thin black line running from their eyes to their tails.

 

[nanu156]

what you do to create a perfect strain for a color variation is breed brothers to sisters repeatedly and cull the undesired fry. Then repeat.

When you have your desired color strain you ONLY SELL the males, you cull all female offspring except for your breeders. This keeps other folks from stealing your strain. It's a great way to learn about genetics, you can also do pundit squares and chart your results. Teaching about recessive vs dominant traits etc.

If you are just in it for fun a few 5-10g tanks will get you started.

 

[freash_water_monster]

what you do to create a perfect strain for a color variation is breed brothers to sisters repeatedly and cull the undesired fry. Then repeat.

When you have your desired color strain you ONLY SELL the males, you cull all female offspring except for your breeders. This keeps other folks from stealing your strain. It's a great way to learn about genetics, you can also do pundit squares and chart your results. Teaching about recessive vs dominant traits etc.

If you are just in it for fun a few 5-10g tanks will get you started.

Ok im pretty sure if you breed brothers and sister there colors start to fad .

 

[nanu156]

Nope thats how you do it. You take brother and sister with the traits you want to enhance breed them cull the undesirables and then repeat.

That is how it is done in almost all fancy fish breeding ie; bettas, guppies, peacocks etc. Culling means to euthanize the unwanted offspring, what you hope for is that in each batch of fry there are one or 2 babies that are suitable for breeders for the next generation. The reality of specialty fish breeding isn't real pretty. now if you are just a regular hobbyist looking to breed up some fun fish and maybe have a grand total of 8-10 batches of offspring then you just mix and match and find out what you find out. If your goal is to make a designer strain (btw all guppies are the same, strain names are like naming coat colors on alley cats, a tabby and a calico are the same breed) thats how you would go about doing it. It's the best way to eventually end up with very even results and to have a breeding colony that produce the same offspring each time. There is a local guy who has really nice guppies around here he calls his strain mixed berry, it's not a breed per-say its just a color strain that he has perfected and is salable.

 

[nanu156]

here is some info from a serious breeder on how he does it.
Guppy Designer - Strain maintenance: how to use the 6 tanks? - Guppy Designer Forum

Basically he starts with a breeding group, gets two drops of fry, grows them out a bit and then culls the original breeding group.

He then grows them out some more and culls all but 2-3 males and 4-5 females then starts again.

there are also some traits that are increased by backing up and crossing offspring to parents in those cases he saves the needed parents for the process.

There is a lot of fish killing involved in creating a true strain.

 

[lynmccoy]

I wasn't goin'g to try to go into business or create a new perfect strain. We were just looking at looking our tank and thinking about mixing some of our males and females to get some unusual color combinations like a purple moscow and a white moscow, then maybe a blue moscow and a gold moscow. We're wondering if anyone has any ideas on guppies that might produce pretty tankmates for our home tank. We don't sell any of ours. I thought the solid colored guppies might produce the best results.

 

[Sageofstupidity]

I mixed a very pretty turquoise male with a almost colorless yellow female and got a male with a bright yellow tail and shiny blue body. You can play around however you like but do you have a safe tank for the babies? You will want a good number to survive if you care about how they look but you will have to cull the rest or give them away. You can try cross guppies with mollies too I guess. My blonde tux delta keeps mating with a orange lyretail I am really curious to see how those will come out, as she is also mating a black sailfin mollie. If she ever produces muppies I will post pictures, if I can guess they are really muppies and not mollies.

 

[Fishman1995]

Ive mixed a female with a redish tail with a male that had a red tail and got a baby with a blue tail and body

 

[nanu156]

Yeah, what you are likely getting at an LFS is not a real clear strain, its hard to know what the passive genetic traits of those fish will be.

I love science and this would be a great science project for a kid (maybe 12+ or a real mature 8+) google Punnett Square Guppy. Read what you can, make some squares (notebook paper will suffice) and try some out. I would suggest finding 5-10 5-10g tanks to hold your fry. You really will be giving your granddaughter a leg up in science with a project like this. If you photograph and document it it would be a great science fair project. It will take a while to get from start to end so starting it now for the next school year would be a great plan.

I now have the itch to start a guppy project just for fun

 

[freash_water_monster]

Yeah, what you are likely getting at an LFS is not a real clear strain, its hard to know what the passive genetic traits of those fish will be.

I love science and this would be a great science project for a kid (maybe 12+ or a real mature 8+) google Punnett Square Guppy. Read what you can, make some squares (notebook paper will suffice) and try some out. I would suggest finding 5-10 5-10g tanks to hold your fry. You really will be giving your granddaughter a leg up in science with a project like this. If you photograph and document it it would be a great science fair project. It will take a while to get from start to end so starting it now for the next school year would be a great plan.

I now have the itch to start a guppy project just for fun

O i know i want to get back into guppies i had so many in my tank with cool colors then i sold them to the pet store

 

[lynmccoy]

We have a nursery tank that I put our mamma in when she looks like she's getting ready to have her babies. Then after the babies are born, I put her back into the female tank. I keep the fry in the nursery tank til they're too big to be eaten and til I can tell whether they are boys or girls so i can put them into the right tank. I don't sell any of my guppies so I don't breed mine very often.