Peter McLeod

It is very important that the young females are separated from the young males.If you haven't got the tank-space the breeding traps would be very important, and $10 is very reasonable. Remember if you are having trouble deciding if your fry are male or female, treat them as a male.Better to loose a few females than ruin all the work you have put into your new strains.If your fry are well fed you should be able to start separating the females from 3 weeks up to about 5 weeks.Look for the gravid spot, when you get a bit more practice visually you will notice the young males and females are shaped differently. Peter

You could also try floating a container or livebearer trap in the tank with the female inside.This is usually for the protection of the female, but may aid getting the male interested if he can see the female but she cannot disturb him. You will know when they are ready, the male will keep approaching the container and flairing his gills and fins at the female, and then return to his position below the nest waiting for the female to follow, the female will have dark vertical stripes and she will angle head down slightly but will not try to hide or evade the male.The virticale stripes may not show up as much on the green bodied females so don't use this as a golden rule. Goodluck Peter

Is the female larger than the male? If the male is young it may take him a bit of practice before he gets it right.I have had males not interested in building a nest mating with a female as soon as I release her into his aquarium, and he just builds the nest as he goes. Probably the most important thing is that the male and female sould be about the same size.The male needs to be able to wrap himself around the female so he catches and fertilises the eggs in his bottom fin, he then rolls over releasing the female and the eggs drop towards the bottom of the tank. The male needs to be in the best condition posible, even more so than the female i beleive, he has alot of work to do.Try separating them for a few days and let them recover.Feed them on some live food if you can find it or frozen bloodworms.Live mosquito and midge lavae(bloodworms) I have read they contain something that enduces them to spawn, may just be the live food (chase) I don't know but they do work.Don't worry about the female droping her eggs, she will be capable of makeng eggs in just a few hours if she is interested and well fed.The water should be about 50% from an established Aquarium and 50% aged or rain water.Fish that have not spawned for me often respond to a decent water change.I also use a peice of polystyrene or a poly cup cut in half for the male to build his nest around.You can also try using a different female, or male. Is your fishroom heated.If not it may be better to wait until wamer weather as you can't have the pump going or it will disturb the nest and if their is nothing circulating the water the hot and cold will separate.The air above the water should at least be warm while the male is tending the nest.I find a few drops of Methyl blue good for prventing fugus on any un-fertilised eggs which can infect good eggs near-by.If you have an attentive male he will usually find and eat these eggs. Hope this helps Don't hesitate to email me if you have problems.I have plenty more fighters that you are welcome to if these ones don't get it right. Peter

Hi Andrew Hopefully I won't get many culls, so far all of Kelly's guppies have developed into really nice breeders, some are light blue almost green and others are a very dark blue.I do have a few colourless males that pop up when I am playing around with petshop bought females and can keep them aside for you if you want. We have plentiful supplies of mosquito fish around Rotorua.Aparently they are illegal to catch but you can get permision from DOC to catch them if you have a valid use for them.I can find out for you if you want. Peter

Hi Terry. No there are none at the moment.Hopefully if we can get a few people interested that are willing to work together we can have alot of fun. I got a few pairs of line-bred guppies from Petworld down in Christchurch.Not the same as the guppies we would like, but I was supprised with them because alot of imported guppies that are sold as line bred have different paterns or colour in the dorsal and caudal.The H/B leopards I got from them have a very good match.Imported line-bred guppies often are over the hill or unable to breed.With the first generation I got off the leopards the males were not as consistent as I would have liked but because the father is still very active and definately not sterile I was able to cross him back to his daughters who are now very pregnant.Hopefully I will even be able to cross him back to his grandaughters if I take good care of him. I will be contacting them again soon to see what new guppies they have. Give me or Cees an e-mail if you want us to send you some fish or help in any way. Peter

I am trying to compile virgin female guppies with different colours.If anyone is interested in trying out line breeding, get in touch with me, it can be very rewarding, I will try to organise getting some virgin females to you.I also have some of Cees's half black blue guppies he bred a few years ago that Kelly Rennel gave me if you want to try a more established line.They should be good seed fish if you find an interesting male that you want to try and fix a new line with.I won't have many of these for a while but If you want to contact me I will let you know when some are available.both Cees and I are really interested in getting a group of people together that are interested.I will help you out as much as I can.I'm sure Cees will be able to offer advice when he can.Anyone with any questions please contact me, If I don't know the answer to your questions I will endevour to find answers.It will be a good learning experience for me as well.I can send you micro worm cultures to help you as well, not quite as good as brine shrimp but would be alright with a good feeding schedule, and all you need to culture them is oats,yeast and marmite.

Petworld in Christchurch has a selection of gouramis for sale.I'm sure if people showed interest in a particular type and they could source them oversea's.Maybe leave a message on their website and see what happens. www.petworld.co.nz At the moment they have; Blue,Golden,Moonlight,Thicklip and Blue Turquoise Dwarf Gourami.Go to their homepage and click on the latest fish list. Peter

It is difficult in NZ to obtain good quality breeding stock.The quarantine facilities down here are all privately owned and do not deal with the public, beleive me I have tried with both fighters and line bred guppies.It is simply not economical for them to deal with the public and do one off orders.They import their fish in bulk usually from asia-Singapore.All I can do is hope someone else in NZ has some decent fish or just find the best imported ones I can. I do think though it might be my only option to solve certain problems.Like you said I can keep crossing my own fish the way I have and try some new blood to see what happens. Peter

I have bred good coloured female fighters through in-breeding.If I crossed males from outside would I loose the colour.

I have recently emailed Shawn Sprague in America and asked for his help in helping Cees, myself and fellow New Zealanders on the subject of linebreeding guppies, and hopefully in the end a NZ guppy society. I am also wanting to start a website to promote the breeding and maintaining of line bred guppies in NZ.What idea's do people have and what questions would you like most answered so Cees and I can compile relevent information for you. Shawn is more than happy to answer any questions you may have about line breeding guppies, he has told me if he can't answer your questions he has alot of very knowledgable people to bounce idea's off.His email address is [email protected]. I will email him and see if he can pop into the forum occasionally to see if he can answer any questions. Anyone with idea's Peter

It would be great if you could give me some advice, The only other thing I can think of is that I have bred my females to be highly coloured, some of them are just as colourful as the males.Would them being colourful have something to do with this problem.They are definately female, some of the most colourful ones I have bred and they have good batches of fry. I could try crossing out and bring some new males from outside as I have only bred brother to sister for the last 4 years but I am worried I might loose the colour in my females. Peter

I know what you mean about the males that don't develope tails, when I started breeding them about 4 years ago I got many of them in my hatches, but after a while of breeding haven't seen many crop up in my batches at all. Maybe with my females it's just the way they are but they definately cause more problems for me than the males do, I have in the past kept a batch together as long as 3 months with no real problems even with the males fighting.I can leave a male in with the females if I want and the rest of the males are segregated either into large jars or one male into each of my guppy tanks. Peter

My females are fine together, I just can't put them with other types of fish, they cause no end of trouble.The males go in with my guppies and they seem to leave them alone, but if I put female fighters in with my guppies all I would be left with the next morning is dead or dieing guppies.The females have occasional conflicts together, and it is usually the older females causing the trouble, I don't use females for breeding that are older than about 6 months, I have had them kill my good males and even drive them away and take over the nest, and they never do a very good job. Peter

I will ask Ardi at wonderworld where he got his from.I have heard of populations in Tauranga, aparently the local kids used to catch them in the drainage ditches, the same places you would expect to find mosquito fish.I will do some investigating and get back to you. Thanks for the info on the swordtails and mollies, looks like I might be going on a mission sometime soon.

Paradise fish are wild in some NZ districts, they can survive average temperatures of 16Degrees and lower for short periods.Sometimes they turn up for sale at Wonderworld Aquarium here in Rotorua.Last time I went in there they had a few males and females for sale. You could try giving DOC a ring an see if there are any wild in your area, in Rotorua we have alot of wild mosquito fish, and also guppies aparently but I have never found any.

Cees lensink would be a good person to ask about breeding guppies.I have done a bit of breeding of guppies and found Half Black guppies the easiest guppies to work with because H/B is a dominant gene. Separate your female guppies as soon as you see their gravid spot appearing at about 3-5 weeks depending on temperature in your tank and the genetics of your fish.When the females are 3-4 months of age you can either use one of their brothers if they develope what you are looking for or buy a young male with the characteristics you want in your guppies.It is important he is young because you want to make as many crosses with him as posible, mate him to your females choose the best 3-4 females and mate him to his daughters and even his grand daughters if posible, this will help to consolodate the genes and help to fix the strain you are breeding.When you loose your male all you can do is choose the best male and breed him to his sisters and so on.If you go through a generation about every four months it shouldn't take long to see some results. Provided your male isn't sterile some of the fry from resulting drops should be his even though the female has already been mated, this could backfire on you though and I would sugest using the young virgin females you already have, you probably won't see much improvement in the first generation but they will get better with patients.

Hi everyone my name is Peter McLeod I have been into breeding tropical fish for about 5 years, mainly guppies and siamese fighters.I have my own fishroom that is cheaper to run than heating alot of indevidual tanks and I am also thinking of building my fishroom out to incorperate the garage as well.When your breeding it dosn't matter how many tanks you have ist's never enough.I have a few nice guppies, some were given to me by Kelly Rennel and others I purchased from Petworld in Christchurch as trio's that I am now into my second generation and back crossing the virgin females back to their fathers. I have been line breeding fighters for about 4 years and by carefully breeding only females with the best colour have got them as colourful as my males.Still having problems with the red wash in some of my blues and greens but it is fading little by little with each generation. Thats all for now