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Ribbon Tail Guppies


RoninBoxers

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Hi Helene,

Funny you should mention this. :)

I have a male Guppy that I have watched developing.

At first I thought it was a Top Sword... then I thought it was a Double Sword.. but then it seemed to develop into a Triple Sword.. but now looks like it is dragging a "torn coloured flag" behind it :)

At this point I began to wonder if something had taken a good munch from it's tail.. but the extensions it shows are quite uniform... and is definitely some form of trait from the breeding that it is carrying.

It's only a quite small male, compared to my others, and to be honest it is in the cull tank ready for feeding out.. but I "may" just stick a couple of virgin F1 females in another tank with it and see what develops :)

The F1's are from large bodied quality females.. so who knows what the results will be.

Some of the fry from another batch of F1's are now just over a month old and are showing some fantasic tail colours .. mainlly solid red at the moment. Hopefully these will develop into some good breeding stock.

Just had another look at it.. 3:10am :)

The tail is now in "four" seperate extentions.. and the "splits" as it were.. extend to half the length of the tail... but don't come to points as in the Swordtail... and the dorsal is also quite long as the tip of it .. (which is quite thin and stringy).. extends well past the front part of the tail.

The rear half of the body is a very dark (almost black).. blue colour, while the tail is variety of colours, with the forward body area is a silvery green almost.

Sorry... before you ask... no camera he he.

Must get the daughter to take a decent pic of it.

Shall we christen it the Poecilia Quadrupilatus :)

GEEZ Helene... I'm not gonna get to sleep now... (Bill thinks... "Now how do I go about fixing this gene for the tail...?

"Well... I could start by.... "... Ha ha.

"Ok Guppy... you got two months to show your stuff... then you are history " :)

Great stuff Helene :)

Good to see your posts again,

Bill.

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Heya Bill!

That sounds really interesting!!! You'll have to give us an update in a few months. Your boy sounds like he could possibly be a "swallow" tail. (and no, NOT swallowed by a cichlid! :lol: ) They split off and can get a bit stringy, they also have the stringy dorsal fin. He probably isn't a ribbon fin because the males gonopodiums are a mile long and useless! (though there are AI techniques, but thats a whole nother topic)

The reason I asked is that I've got a female that is almost certainly a ribbon fin, I've never seen anything like it!! Her ventral fins are well over an inch long!!! An impressive feat given that she's a tiny female (so far). Personally I find it revolting, but I'm not one to pass up a challenge...

Would love to know how your reds develop!

I see sleepless nights ahead :)

Helene

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Hi Helene,

There were quite a lot of Mollies for sale some time back with this extended ventral fin trait. Can't remember where I saw the pic.. possibly on an OS board.. but the ventral fin had become so big it was almost like a second tail, and the males from this batch had gono's so extended that they were useless for breeding... so obviously the genetic engineers had been having a go at something or other. It was a one time thing.. and I saw no more of it after that.

You say that it could be a "Swallow Tail".. but swallows have twin extensions (not four).. and the top and bottom sword tail (Doublesword) would possibly carry that name in some parts of the world. I suppose the "Ribbon Tail" is just a name someone called their variation.

There's a lot of confusion with names, like the Cobra is often called the Snakeskin.. the Pintail often called the Sword.. (but has a central single pointed extension).. the Yellows called the Gold .. the Twin/Double Sword called perhaps the Swallow.. the Roundtail often called the Combtail.. the Fantails, Triangles and Veiltails we would normally call Deltas.. but the angle.. shape and length determines which is which.. and so on.

Guppy classification always "was" complicated.. and they even changed the name to confuse us more. :)

I "did" see something of interest which I posted on the Poecilia site, http://poecilia.net.nz/members/messages/ which may be of interest to others.

All is not what it seems...

I've often wondered "why" they only bring certain sexes of fish into this country... namely males.

For our considerations, the Male is signified by the prefix XY... and the Female by XX.. but now I find out that they have produced not only XX Males... but also YY males... but wait.. there's more as the ad says..

They have also produced YY Females.and also XY FEMALES...

So what has all this to do with males coming into the country you may ask..?

Well.. here's the thing.

The XY Male is the one that carries the gene to determine the sex of the offsping.. and the XX Female is just the carrier of that gene.. as she is in a number of things... however..

By crossing the XX Male to a normal XX Female the result is 100% FEMALES

By crossing the XX Male with the XY Female, then the XY-female produces 25% daughters, 50% normal sons as well as 25% YY-males!

On the other hand, if the YY Male as mentioned above was mated to a normal XX Female.. then it would produce 100% MALES.

Prior to all this they could control the outcome ratio of males and females by feeding gravid females with either oestrogen-enhanced or testosterone-enhanced food

The Genetic Scientist has stepped in, and now these XX YY males and females are fully functional, in all respects, and by the look of things are producing millions of offspring for the big names in the overseas export industry.

Possibly they are doing this overseas to prevent certain species being reproduced to a high standard.

Happy Days :)

Bill.

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I done a search on "ribbon tail guppy" and it was a picture search via google and it showed what I think to be what they are after with the extra long fins and things. They look very pretty and very different and as you say I think the males would be useless as their gono's are to long.

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I'm not apoligizing for the post that got hit by a mod on a mod.

I have read of this operation being done, and now because of this PC "hit it first" attitude, you, the reader, can't improve your knowledge.

What I wrote was constructive, not joking and my mouth does not need the same op as the original complainant says.

When you have a very rare and hard to breed species you will attempt any thing to keep the line going.

I was not trying to interrupt a thread but add to it.

So don't let this interrupt a "livebearer thread", carry on with your posts.

If you want to know what I said PM me.

Alan 104

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your cvamment aboyut them being circumcised alan did not explain anything, you did not elaborate on it, just left it at a one liner, which looked like a smart alec remark, I stand by my moderating and if you wish to elaborate on your comment then please do, people will be interested in hearing it in a full explanation.

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Surely a one liner leads it onto others saying "wow ! I wonder if you can do that??" and create more interest in the whole thing.

Shame it was chopped. But now the rest of the readers of this thread know what I said without me saying it again.

Alan 104

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  • 2 years later...

I still have them. They are a very strong strain and I'm really enjoying them. They are some of the biggest healthiest guppies I have had (though that is the line more than the fact they have ribbon fins :-)

I am about to do my first experiment crossing them into another strain to see if I understand how the ribbon tail gene is carried (dominant) in which case it can be added into any other strain relatively easily. Though because of technical difficulties is hard to breed 100% true (working on that too!)

Cheers.

Helene

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